


Doctor Who Season Five

by Aria



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Alien Planet, Alternate Universe - Canon, Epic, Multi, Time War, Virtual Season/Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-07-20
Updated: 2008-07-19
Packaged: 2017-10-03 05:16:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 49,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aria/pseuds/Aria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Donna Noble rediscovers herself, Torchwood finds all sorts of useful technology, the Doctor and the Master just can't get rid of each other, the past doesn't stay where it should, and Time starts to heal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 5x01: The Twenty-Four Hour Minister

## (London, Earth, 2009)

When she was young, she used to fall asleep listening to her heartbeat echo back at her with her ear pressed to the pillow, pretending it was someone else's. No reason to change habits with age; just cos she'd managed to find herself a bloke and lose him on bloody Christmas is no reason not to still imagine, even if it's not Lance she's imagining. Except the heartbeat keeps intruding into daylight, pulling her distant from the world, and --

"Oi, are you even _listening_?" Nerys demands.

"What? Yeah. Course." Donna gives Nerys a smile. It feels real. No reason it shouldn't be.

"So it turned out she was after Carl all along, right? And Carl knew it but they're both too bloody shy to get a move-on so the boss said -- _Donna_. God, I dunno what to do with you."

"I'm listening," Donna protests. "Carl, yeah? In accounting."

"That's it. Anyway, the boss said they might as well just shag and get it done with, only _I_ think he's after that tart of a secretary, and if you're still temping, right, you might want to --"

"Dunno if I'll be temping," Donna says, fiddling with her straw. "Did you know, my mum's not even on my case about it any more? Makes me want to do something better with myself. God, psychology. Can't even figure myself out."

"No," Nerys says, pointing a manicured finger at Donna. "That one's easy. Your mum got kidnapped by one of those aliens, right, and had her brain transplanted."

"Give _over_ with those aliens of yours." Donna rolls her eyes and sucks up the last of her drink. "Right. That's me done, then. Got to be back at the office in ten." She doesn't watch the surprise on Nerys' face, nor listen to Nerys' protest of "They give you the shortest lunch break in the world, they do;" she overrides it, "Yeah, I know, not bleeding fair, is it? See you later!" and leaves Nerys sitting there in astonishment.

In the street she takes a deep breath, a little astonished herself. Maybe Nerys is right about the aliens. Her brain's well scrambled.

Waiting on the corner for a break in traffic, she sees for a moment a bubble across the street. Big bubble. Big bubble floating by a lamppost, with a curly pale seahorse inside. No, that can't -- Donna frowns, blinks, squints at the lamppost. Nothing's there and now she has a headache.

She sets off in the general direction of her own house. She's off work for the day; landed a temp job in Hounslow West that only needs her working mornings, which suits Donna just fine. Working only mornings helps a bit with the headaches. They're infrequent, and they only started recently, but Gramps noticed right away, started treating her extra-gentle, and somehow convinced Mum to do the same. That was great for a week or two, until suddenly it wasn't: headaches getting worse, and always accompanied by frustration and wanderlust, like Donna suddenly found the whole bloody planet crammed inside her head and somehow still too small to fit. She'd love to believe in Nerys' aliens, but she's never _seen_ any, and Nerys makes things up too often to be trustworthy on this point.

Which doesn't explain why she's up on Gramps' stargazing lately, or why she's taken to wandering the field allotment behind the hill on her afternoon free time, looking for -- meteors, she supposes. So far she's found a few fossilized chalky things and learned to identify Venus without needing Gramps to point it out first.

Venus, Donna thinks, climbing the hill and passing the bare patch of ground where Gramps spreads his blanket, the crumbs from the sandwich she made him last night. Venus, which -- something about martial arts. Pressure points. Oh, she must've seen a film. The wind's picking up around her, tugging at her coat and pulling her forward. Donna squints up at the sky. Looks like rain. She'll have to be back inside soon or she'll get soaked.

She tramps on down into the field. The far side, near the little copse of trees bounding another stretch of residential streets, is all over in ashes: someone did a controlled burn there last year, but they didn't do it properly; nothing's grown back in all that time. Still, Donna hasn't been over that way yet, and she isn't likely to find any meteors for Gramps but she might find a forgotten penny twisted into interesting shapes by the heat.

Five minutes and no luck later, with the treacherous false dusk of an oncoming storm gathering in around her and ashes starting to cling to the red varnish on her nails, Donna's annoyed enough to straighten and dust herself off, turning for home. That moment a last ray of sun slips through the gathering clouds and glints off something in the ashes.

"That's more like it, then," Donna tells the world at large, and kneels.

It's a pretty ring, not in the least damaged by the fire, nor tarnished by time. Donna can't imagine how it got here. But she picks it up and turns it around in her fingers, examining the design on it, a sort of bubbled double fractal. For a moment it almost means something, like catching the briefest glimpse of a face in among clouds; then it's gone. Donna shrugs and pockets the ring, heading for home.

By the shed she sees a funny bubble-sheen in the air again, but when she turns to look there's nothing there.

Mum's out shopping with some mates, and Donna finds Gramps snoring on the couch with a blanket half-fallen onto the floor, so she gives him a fond little smile and heads up to her room. Coat gets thrown carelessly over her bed, and she sits atop it, digging the ring back out of her pocket. "Not my style at all," she tells it. "And too big by half." She grins, sitting there in her empty room. "Might fit Nerys," she tells the world at large, and, shrugging, slips it on.

Donna Noble has never been stupid enough to lick her finger and then stick it in a plug, but it probably feels something like this. A shock races up her hand through her whole body, catches for a moment at the base of her skull and _tugs_; she gives an involuntary gasping yelp and sees gold, maddeningly familiar but she's in too much startled pain to catch the familiarity before it vanishes and she's just sitting there in astonishment, staring.

Harold Saxon is standing in the middle of her bedroom.

_Harold Saxon_ is standing in the _middle_ of her _room_, in shirtsleeves and a tie, looking mildly surprised. The only blemish in his impeccable appearance is a small bloom of crimson halfway down the side of his shirt.

Donna gapes at him. "What?"

He recovers himself at once and smiles his trademark charming smile. "Hello."

"No, but -- what?" Donna says, with a weird creeping sense of déjà vu.

Saxon's lips twist slightly. "This is a bit unexpected, yes. And who are you?"

"Donna Noble," Donna says, finally recovering herself. "And what the _hell_ are you doing in my _room_?"

"Is it?" Saxon says with mild interest. "I really haven't the faintest, ah, Donna." He peers around. "And where might this be?"

"Chiswick," Donna says, a little angry now, "London, England, _sir_. Sorry, just to get this straight, you're _Harold Saxon_."

A grin flickers across his face. "Harold Saxon. Yes."

"You're the twenty-four-hour Minister. In my _bedroom_."

"Yes, I --" Saxon double-takes. "I'm the what?"

"Twenty-four-hour Minister," Donna repeats. "Well, I s'pose you wouldn't know that. Was on all the news. That first-contact hoax. Funded by terrorists or something. Right lot of chaos we had for a few months, thanks, you and the American President both killed and oh my _god_ what are you doing here?"

Saxon's eyebrows quirk a little. "So that's what they're calling it. Tidy." He laughs suddenly. "But the Cabinet was already gone! And you _didn't_ just fall to pieces? Maybe there's something to that endless admiration for human ingenuity after all."

Donna gapes at him. "Shut up!"

He blinks at her, as though he's momentarily forgotten she's in any way important. (She is. Someone said --) Then his lip curls a little in disgust. "You are not a particularly good specimen."

"Oi! Watch it!" Donna finds herself standing, hands clenched into fists. It's beginning to rain outside. She's never particularly imagined meeting politicians, presumed dead or otherwise, but if she had she wouldn't have imagined it like _this_.

"I --" Saxon stops halfway through the vowel and stares at Donna's hand. "Oh, now, that's more like it."

Donna starts to cross her arms, but Saxon says, "Don't" with a weird peculiar resonance and she -- doesn't. He holds out a hand. "Let's see it," he says, and tilts his head a little, twitches his fingers impatiently. Donna drags a reluctant step forward and gives him her hand, the ring glinting over a knuckle. "Oh," Saxon breathes, "but you _couldn't_." Looks up at her with dark eyes that looked so very calm and reassuring those few times she'd happened to catch him on telly, but now remind her of nothing so much as the pulling dark spaces in the light-years between stars.

She shudders. "Couldn't what?"

"Biodata ring," Saxon murmurs, apparently to himself, and slips it gently from Donna's finger, slides it onto his own and relaxes considerably. Donna does too, taking a stumbling step back before Saxon looks up again and pins her with those awful eyes. "But you'd need a _massive_ charge -- been near electrical storms lately, Donna?"

"No," Donna says, and to her shame it comes out half a whisper. "May I sit down?"

And he _laughs_, throws back his head and laughs like a delighted little boy. "I _like_ you," he says. "Sit down, do. Don't stand on --" another laugh "-- my account. Polite. I do like polite."

Donna's legs fold and she sits on the bed, shaking. Things are fluttering in the back of her head, fragments of whispers. _Don't trust him._ Of all the bloody unhelpful things, don't _trust_ him, she already knows _that_. She's too scared to stand for the first time in her whole life -- not even when she -- mirrors -- because she can't _remember_, can't remember how she's supposed to make her body her own. Crushed-down neurons are trying to spark, trying to fight to life and slam up mental shields, but they can't, and she's sitting here just paralysed.

Her mouth still works well enough, though, so she says, fierce as she can, "And I can do impolite, _Mister_ Saxon. Get the sodding hell out of my house!"

He tsks. "And we were doing so _well_. Let's try again. Not electrical storms." He considers her, head tilted and eyes gone narrow. "Exposure to Huon particles?" At Donna's blank look, he sighs. "No, too improbable. Vortex radiation?" He grins again at that, another terrifying three-second mood. "Did he send you instead of coming himself? Not like him."

"I dunno what you're talking about," Donna says, her voice only trembling a little. _I thee biodamp._ Ooh, that headache. She bows her head, clutching at her forehead, skull pounding; when cool fingers come to settle at her temples, for a moment she actually _lets_ him, lets the pounding headache subside, relaxes before -- _No, you can't!_ \-- she jerks away, her vision splintering into the refracted light of tears, and through the blur she sees Saxon rock back on his heels with a look of stunned fury. "I'm sorry," Donna tries, not quite sure what she's saying, "I -- I'm so sorry," and Saxon shakes her, hisses, "_Donna Noble_," and she comes back.

"Oi! Get off me!"

He does.

"I'd ask what he did to you," Saxon says, "but you wouldn't be able to answer, would you?"

Donna shudders and swipes a hand over her face. "I've had a bad day," she mumbles. "I've had a bad week. Please get out."

And then something taps at the window.

Something taps at the window, during a rainstorm, outside the upstairs level of the house. Donna raises her head slowly and sees two of those bubble-seahorse things, bobbing outside the window and peering in at her with an air of politeness. She finds herself too exhausted even to cry.

Saxon goes to the window. "Any idea what those are?"

Donna sniffs. "No."

"Shall I let them in?" Saxon asks, and looks over his shoulder at her with the most peculiar expression, part hunger and part pity and still so terribly blank. Really honestly asking her permission, like he's a guest about to let other guests into the house, and despite the fact that the guests are a presumed-dead, suddenly-appearing former Prime Minister and floating giant seahorse things, Donna feels a little bit more in charge now.

"Yeah," she says. "Sure, why the hell not."

So Saxon opens the window and the seahorse things bob in. "Greetings," one of them (or perhaps both; Donna can't tell) whirrs, a slightly distorted but perfectly intelligible word. "We represent the Ffsoehi Scientific Research Brigade." A pause, and possibly the other one (or maybe again both) adds, "Temporal Anomaly Division. Do we have your permission to scan?"

Saxon draws himself up. "Sol Three is a Classification Five planet," he says coldly. "Research _that_ before you go revealing yourselves to humans."

"Hang on," Donna says faintly, standing. "These are like -- alien seahorses?"

The seahorse things make a little buzzing bleep. "Seahorse," one of them whirrs, "Genus _hippocampus_. There are over thirty-two species of seahorse residing in the oceans of Sol Three, composed of H2O and with an average salinity of three-point-five per cent --"

"So, alien," Donna interrupts.

"We represent the Ffsoehi Scientific Research Brigade," the seahorse -- Ffsoehi? -- repeats. "Aladfar Six. Permission to scan?"

"For -- temporal anomalies," Donna says. She's still shaking a little.

"Correct."

"Yeah, well, do him first," she says, jerking her head in Saxon's direction. He shoots her a look of wide-eyed surprise that she duly ignores.

"Permission to scan?" the Ffsoehi repeats.

Saxon considers for a moment, then shrugs, such a very loose careless movement that Donna knows at once he's wound very tight by all this. "Might as well tell me the damage." The two Ffsoehi just stay there, bobbing politely. He sighs. "You may scan."

At once the bubbles glow blue-white and make a high-pitched humming noise. Donna can't see a scan beam or anything, but the humming is definitely pointed in Saxon's direction. After about five seconds, it ends and Donna's bedroom is abruptly the proper colour again.

"No temporal anomalies detected," the Ffsoehi announces.

Saxon's eyes go wide again, not feigned this time. "But I'm --" he says, and stops abruptly. He shoots Donna a strangely wary look. "I'm not human. Sol Three? Twenty-first century? Classification Five planet?"

"Hang on," Donna says loudly, "we had a _Martian_ Prime Minister?"

The look he levels at her is plainly disgusted. "I'm not from Mars."

"But you're alien. Oh my god." The headache isn't back, but Donna doesn't feel quite right. The seahorses are one thing. A plainly recognisable _human-looking_ public figure who turns out to be an alien is something else entirely. "So you're like -- Elvis or something."

Saxon makes a soft noise of disgust and turns back to the Ffsoehi. "Non-human, twenty-first-century Earth. Not a temporal anomaly? No?"

"No temporal anomalies detected," the Ffsoehi repeats calmly. "Our databanks indicate an all-access temporal pass for Rassilon-era Gallifreyans."

"Ah." Saxon's shoulders relax slightly. "They would. All right. What about Donna Noble here?"

Donna comes forward nervously. Most of her is absolutely against being scanned -- but there in her head, insistent words, _But you are special_, and she needs to know what the hell is going on. She takes a deep breath and tells them, "Your scanners give me cancer or something and -- and so help me, I'll boil you like lobsters." One of the Ffsoehi makes the information-search buzzing bleep, and she adds quickly, "So get on with it!"

The blue-white glow and high-pitched humming return. All the little hairs on Donna's arms stand straight up and for a moment she sees all that gold light again. Then it's over and the Ffsoehi, both of them, are blinking excitedly and making small beeping noises. Donna barely masters the urge to hit them to shut them up, because it probably won't work. She settles for, "Shut up and tell me, then!"

They both speak, rapidfire, one after another, the words nearly blending: "Huon particles detected -- unusual coincidence field -- Vortex radiation in a _homo sapien_ \-- inexact DNA match -- Time Beetle -- creation -- incomplete --"

"Stop," Saxon says coldly, and the Ffsoehi stop abruptly. "From the beginning," he says, as though he's conducting a lecture. "The presence of Huon particles would kill her within days."

Calm again, one of the seahorses says, "The only trace remains in her dead hair follicles."

"So she _had_ \--" Saxon stops abruptly and sucks his cheeks in a little, clearly thinking hard. "The Vortex radiation is easy enough -- but why he --" Stops again. "Inexact DNA match?"

"Gallifrey-style basal ganglions detected," the Ffsoehi says.

Saxon looks honestly floored. "She has _Time Lord neurons_?"

"Correct."

At once all that cold focused attention is turned directly on Donna. She manages to keep looking at him, but can't actually speak; from the first word of assessment spoke by the Ffsoehi, the pounding in her head has been getting worse, and she's sitting on the bed by now, clutching at it. Saxon is across the room and kneeling next to her in an instant. "Time Lords," he says.

She jerks her head. "No."

"Oh, er -- TARDIS, how's that? Time Vortex." He leans forward a little. "The Doctor?"

"No," Donna repeats. "No, no, I don't --"

"But you can't have been _turned_ human," he tells her, voice tinged with frustration. "It completely rewrites your biology. It wouldn't have triggered the ring and it wouldn't come up on any scan."

Donna hears the words, but distantly. After a moment Saxon seems to notice her non-responsiveness, because he slides cool fingers under her chin and tilts her face up enough that she's looking into his eyes again, horrible and familiar. She shudders and goes still.

"It's all right," Saxon murmurs. "That noise ..." He taps two fingers against her thigh; beat-beat, beat-beat. A quiet mad look slides briefly across his face -- beat-beat-beat-beat -- and off again. "All the things in your head, stuffed tight and locked away -- he really thought that was the only way, didn't he? No finesse."

"I don't," Donna whispers. "I don't understand. There's aliens in my bedroom and you're dead or an alien too and my _head_ ..."

Saxon stands abruptly. "What else did the readings say?"

"Unusual coincidence field," the Ffsoehi says.

"No. Not interesting."

A long pause. Donna lifts her head. She can now, fear and curiosity overriding the pain. The damn seahorses are regarding her with analytical politeness. Then one of them says, again in that tone of calm observation, "You had something on your back."

And the world flares up white in the overload.

Donna remembers: two worlds, the nightmare one, and the real. Donna remembers her wedding. Donna remembers Egypt, all guide books and don't-drink-the-water. Donna remembers the bees disappearing, and the Doctor reappearing. She remembers the Doctor, that skinny streak of alien nothing and absolutely everything, remembers the light of the Earth being born and the shining of a thousand diamond towers, remembers the rush of saving worlds, remembers Martha and Rose and oooh that Captain Jack. Remembers then, the unpacking of a million million pieces of information in her head, Gallifrey in the summertime and a junkyard and the TARDIS' circuits sticking, remembers exile and Scotland and how the dinosaurs died, remembers equations in five dimensions and knows exactly what's happening to her.

Her head snaps upright.

"Oh yeah, _very_ clever," she says, "poke and prod to see how something works and break it in the process. And you think _he_ doesn't have any finesse."

This man, in his suit a year burnt and still wearing the shirt stained by the bullet that killed him, gives her one of those blank courteous looks that means he's sure he'll work out the secrets of the universe any minute now, and won't ask for a hint even though he needs it.

"C'mon, spaceboy!" she says, leaping to her feet. Turns on the Ffsoehi to add, "Yeah, thanks for your help. I'm sure I could be a whole thesis paper. Now off you go! Go on!"

"Explain," one of them says uncertainly.

"Two-way biological metacrisis," Donna says cheerfully, "followed by -- I have to give it to him -- a fairly effective neurological rewrite only likely to be overrode by, ooh, another Time Lord unexpectedly turning up. Or an alien invasion right on my doorstep, but c'mon, how likely's that?" She knows her grin is painful; she knows she's running on adrenaline and beginning to waste time. "Anyway!" She spins back. "You're coming with me, Mister Master. Downstairs. Go on."

Shock flares in the Master's eyes. To his credit he says only, "And what do you plan to do then?"

"Wake up my granddad and get to Cardiff in, say, under four hours. I don't have any longer than that. Brain overload. Bang!" Donna grabs her jacket from the bed. "Last resort, I'll have the Doctor called in, but before that I'm gonna try finding a more permanent solution. Keep that big brain of his." She's at the stairs already and calls over her shoulder, "Come _on_, spaceman. God, you're all bloody the same."

The Master follows her out of sheer curiosity. At least, she's nearly sure that's it. He might be planning to kill her.

Gramps is already up, raised by Donna's commotion. She runs into him at the foot of the stairs. "Gramps! Great! Off to Cardiff, quick."

He catches her shoulders. "You all right, sweetheart?"

"Right now, yeah. But --" she makes sure he's looking right at her "-- I remember, all right? I remember the Doctor, so we've got to do something about my brain cos in a few hours my brain won't be able to take it."

Gramps nods, his eyes shining a little overbright, perfectly determined. Donna hugs him tight, and then over her shoulder he says, "Here, who's this?"

Donna pulls back. The Master's leaning over the banister with raised eyebrows. "Gramps, this is an alien like the Doctor. Same kind. And no, he's not Mr Saxon."

"Oh." Gramps gives the Master an appraising look. "Looks like him."

The Master shrugs and comes bounding down the stairs. "Family?"

"Wilfred Mott," Gramps says. "Donna's granddad."

"I'm the --" the Master starts, and Donna says, "Save it." The Master makes a faint choked noise and she shrugs at him, lips pursed a little, the look that used to really infuriate her mum before -- _oh_. If she survives this, she's giving her mum a really big hug. Right now, she says, "Save the indignation, yeah? Coming?"

"I have a choice?" the Master asks dryly.

Donna snorts. "Yeah. Not exactly holding you at gunpoint, am I?"

The Master considers this. "You're letting me go."

"Yeah, well, right now I'm more worried about living, thanks." She gives the Master a close look. "You understand that."

He blinks, once, and says, in impeccably courteous tones, "Thank you."

"Yeah, well," Donna says again. "Just get out of my house. You kill my mum and I swear you'll be in unbreakable chains for a hundred years and if the TARDIS doesn't have a dungeon now it will have by the time I'm done with you."

"_Donna_," Gramps says.

The Master holds up his hands. "Noted, Miss Noble."

"Good," Donna says, and turns to Gramps. "We have to hurry. Let's go."

She makes sure the Master's out the door first, the rain plastering his hair down and sticking his shirt to his shoulders. She watches a moment too long, as though that's the sort of thing her big Time Lord brain should be doing when it could be thinking of ways to save her. She takes a deep breath, turns, and lets him go.The pounding in her head is back, like half of that ridiculous drumbeat, and she'll have plenty of time to worry about him later. It's not as though he can get off-planet.

There has to be a later.

Gramps starts the car, and they go.


	2. 5x02: Swansong

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am deeply indebted to Fahye for allowing me to borrow various concepts and people from [fortuna fugit](http://fahye.livejournal.com/494125.html) for use in this episode.

## (New Victoria, Asellus Australis, 6347)

He stands for a long while in the quiet vastness of the wardrobe room, the arching curves of his ship less than soothing today. She hums around him, trying to reassure, but he's shivering in his damp clothes and he has the look on Wilf's face imprinted vivid in his head, and he does not want reassurance.

The opposite of reassurance is punishment, the Doctor supposes, smoothing out a new dry shirt and doing up the buttons with unshaking fingers. He feels torn, literally stretched and tugged to pieces: what his other self did, what Davros said and Sarah Jane said and Rose said and Donna had no chance to say. He shrugs on his coat, the long familiar sweep of it settling him into himself a very little, and returns to the console room. "What d'you think, then?" he asks the TARDIS, and mercifully his voice doesn't echo in the emptiness. She hums under his fingers with regret for losing those other five pilots, and an impersonal machine understanding for the necessity of what he does. He nods a little and sets the coordinates for anywhere fast, somewhere in that human future that still exists now. Understanding his quiet urgency, the TARDIS sets down nearly at once on a colony world in Asellus Australis, sixty-fourth century. It'll do.

The Doctor steps out into a foggy evening; the TARDIS melts nearly at once into the shadows of an alley, picked out in brass lettering as the corner of Low Strand and Beggar's Alley. The Doctor folds his coat in around himself and sets off down the cobbled street, shreds of mist clinging to him like little hands.

He's evidently landed in a bad part of town: he hardly walks thirty feet before a rather unwashed man attempts to pick his pocket. The Doctor ignores this entirely and leaves the man standing in the street, holding a banana and the Complete Works of Shakespeare, pocket edition, staring after the Doctor in some bewilderment. The Doctor walks on, past boarded-up subterranean houses and the occasional flickering light from hopeful pawnshops. He pauses for a moment by an advertisement reading _AUTOMATA INDUSTRIA MK 6: all new models! Installed with only the finest silicon; clockwork runs two weeks at a go!_ An anti-gravity locomotive screams by overhead, and the Doctor moves on.

A few streets on -- he still doesn't know what he's looking for, and another banana, a magic 8 ball, and a stubby candle have been sacrificed to further pickpockets -- a figure disentangles itself from a lighted doorway and calls to him. The sign above the door reads _The Gallows_, which is hardly encouraging. Still, the Doctor stops, because this is the first person to speak to him directly. Or -- not person, he corrects himself, when he can see her more clearly. Leaning in the doorway in a low-cut dress and her hair done up, she's quite beautiful in a false and perfect way, marred only by a hole just under her left collarbone and left exposed by the dress: lock and serial number. "Won't you come in?" she asks again, in the perfect imitation of a rather sultry human voice, and the Doctor's about to politely refuse and move on when the music starts.

He's never heard the like. The notes soar, really _soar_, creating complex mathematical patterns that the Doctor can nearly see in his mind, almost complete concentric fractaled circles that form snatches of words, vanishing before he can quite grasp at them; music that harmonizes with itself and creates sympathetic vibrations in the Doctor's chest.

On a technical basis alone, it's brilliant, but the Doctor isn't considering the how of the music. It draws him in, births of star clusters and vast red-and-silver gardens inside the confines of song, and the Doctor cannot turn away. He goes forward, fumbling for the psychic paper as he does so; whether or not it actually fools the mechanical girl in the doorway, she must see the naked longing on his face, and lets him through.

Inside the Gallows is another world, opulent. It contains a bar, a raised small stage, and a number of low-lit tables, all populated by finely dressed gentlemen and the occasional lady; the mechanical girls drift among them, serving drinks and making small conversation. How they can, the Doctor doesn't know; he barely notices them. Sinks down on a seat at the bar with his eyes fixed on the back of the stage dais, where something akin to a pipe organ sits, though where pipes would be there is instead a great mass of strings. A young man sits at the keyboard, fingers flying and feet working the pedals and his head flung back as he sings, wordless notes that vibrate through the strings and out. The Doctor knows such instruments exist, but he's never seen one before -- heard it. A psallopiano, made unique by the strings. Each psallopiano is different, and each arrangement of music: the random arrangement of the psallostrings, subtly shifting with each use, change the notes. It's nearly a living thing, a psallopiano, tuning and retuning itself according to no strictures. They only exist for a century after discovery, as it takes remarkable and innate aptitude to play one, and the skill dies out, or is smothered. At this particular moment in time, though, the Doctor is blessed with a single perfect moment that will never come again to the boy at the psallopiano, and he sits perfectly still in reverence of it.

At length the music ends, to a smattering of light applause. The Doctor tries not to be disgusted by this show of indifference -- as though the music is just some delicacy for the rich, like Mbodian snakes' eggs! -- and turns to the bar. A mechanical girl sees him and comes over at once. "What'll it be, love?"

"I don't --" the Doctor starts, and sighs. "Don't suppose you have any linji-bloom nectar?" At her smiling nod, he adds hopefully, "Carbonated? And with one of those little umbrellas?"

He gets it bubbly, but sans umbrella, which he supposes is at least something. No one else is in need of attention at the bar, so the girl stays hovering near him, and since the music's over the Doctor watches her. She moves quite without clockwork jerkiness; apart from the impossible green of her eyes, and the little exposed keyhole at her shoulder, she might be human. "Sorry," the Doctor says, leaning forward, "sorry, but -- automata industria?"

She looks at him, too sharply for a moment; _pretending_, the moment a smooth smile for the client comes over her face. That's interesting too. "Of course, sir. Eyai. All of us here at the Gallows are mark five and specially ordered by the lady of the house."

"Of course," the Doctor murmurs, echoing back the words, frowning a little.

Someone else comes to the bar, and the mechanical girl -- this eyai -- turns, still with that artful grace. The smile that lights her face is no more or less genuine than the one granted the Doctor, nor is her voice changed, but the Doctor detects absolute sincerity in her "Will! Glad to see you improvised tonight. No old embellished classics. What'll it be?"

The Doctor turns his head to look. It's the young man from the psallopiano, looking wrung out. "I'll have the best scotch you think I can afford," he says. "Thanks, Louisa."

So the eyai girl also has a name. Interesting.

"'Scuse me," the Doctor says, edging a little closer. "Will, is it? Will. I just wanted to say, you were brilliant."

The young man looks a little taken aback. He recovers nearly at once, though, and says, "Thank you." He obviously isn't used to the clientele addressing him, but the Doctor doesn't look terribly like these neo-Victorian dandies. "We have, ah, a different performance every night."

"Every one different," the Doctor agrees. "Depends on the psallostrings."

"That's right," Will says. "Do you know much about psallopianos?"

"No," the Doctor admits. "Never even heard one before tonight. I'm a bit of a traveler, wandered through entirely by chance. But you're good, Will, you're -- well, you're brilliant." He props his chin in a hand and allows himself a grin. "And I don't often say that."

"Thank you," Will says with unwavering courtesy. He looks intrigued, but it's buried beneath the politeness, and a sort of wariness, and his exhaustion.

"Tell you what," the Doctor says, finishing off his nectar and standing, "I'll just come back tomorrow night and hear a whole new one, how does that sound?"

"I should like that," Will says, a little startled. He's probably staring at the Doctor, but the Doctor's already racing outside and doesn't bother to check.

He's in enough of a hurry to avoid running into any would-be thieves on his way back to the TARDIS. In he goes, and she hums in sympathetic resonance as he sets the dial for twenty-two hours later -- makes sure it's hours, not days or months or years. When the TARDIS settles, he pops back out into the dark, a bit clearer than last night's. The fog is mostly gone, and he can see the spindly shapes of the anti-gravity train tunnel, and the towers of the colony's rich. There are no stars.

A different eyai girl is at the Gallows' door, but she doesn't stop him from going in. This time the Doctor's well settled at the bar and stocked with a pile of charming little sandwiches when Will comes onto the dais, not even sparing a glance at the audience, his eyes only for the psallopiano. Then he sits, playing a rising set of notes, a pause, and in a crash of sound he's off and dragging the Doctor. Each particular chord pulls another single impression from the Doctor's mind, and this time he's closer to seeing the music properly. They mean something, each of these mathematically precise and completely spontaneous notes. That pattern there, one arc; that string of notes, its mirroring opposite. Like Will's creating some complex word in High Gallifreyan with which to name the world, and he can't possibly know he's doing it.

By the end the sandwiches have gone dry and the Doctor hasn't moved an inch. He almost wants to get up then, return to the TARDIS, and watch the following night's performance, and the one after, and the one after that, but there probably lies madness, so he stays in his seat. Will doesn't come to the bar, however, so the Doctor rises and goes the curtained partition that seems to delineate backstage. It opens into a long hall full of lighting apparatus and the smell of greasepaint. Will's sitting on the steps leading down from the stage, carefully pulling the kinks out of his hands. He hears the Doctor and his head snaps up.

"Just me," the Doctor says, coming over. "Hello."

"You're not allowed backstage," Will says, more observation than warning. "So you came back after all."

"Yes," the Doctor says.

Will gives him a long thoughtful look. "You really are here for the music."

"Possibly," the Doctor concedes. "I might also be here for other things." Runs a hand through his hair. "Like I said, I'm a traveler. And I've heard of psallopianos before, but these eyai -- are they an invention of this world particularly?"

"That's right," Will says readily enough. Then, in a recitation of simple fact strangely devoid of patriotic pride: "The first scientists on New Victoria discovered a small siliconite moon in orbit. The silicon from the moon is of superior quality. That's why our eyai are much more sophisticated than the artificial intelligences on most other systems."

"And those keyholes?"

"Clockwork," Will says, standing carefully and wincing a little. "Energy-efficient, and in theory it makes the eyai easier to control." Something strange enters his voice then, thinly veiled but extremely calm distaste. The Doctor looks at him sharply, but when Will's eyes meet his they're mild. The Doctor wonders if, were he to look, he might find a small lock under the collar of Will's shirt.

"Why are there no exports, then?" the Doctor asks after a moment.

Will shrugs. "Too expensive?"

"Well," the Doctor says. "Nice to meet you, Will. Really, the playing's brilliant. Might come again tomorrow. I'll just nip out the back and take a look around."

Will starts to nod and pauses, frowning. "A traveler. Are you staying pipeside?"

The Doctor blinks. "Excuse me?"

"Pipeside," Will repeats, a sharp jerk of his chin towards the ceiling. "For rich fellows like you who can afford establishments like this."

"Oh no," the Doctor says, laughing a little in surprise at the absurdity, "I'm not -- I'm not rich, really. I'm just staying on my ship."

"Tubeside?" Will says in astonishment, and when the Doctor opens his mouth to ask, adds, "That's the two ... districts, I suppose. Rich people in the uppers, and the rest of us down here. Named after the Pipe trains and Tube trains."

The Doctor nods slowly. "Well. Yes, then, my ship's tubeside."

"Someone's bound to try to nick it," Will says. "You'd better hurry and get back to it."

"No one's going to take her," the Doctor says, with a proud little grin. "She can't be stolen." He hesitates fractionally, the words sticking in his throat. "Want to see her?"

Will hesitates too, but the Doctor knows he's going to say yes. This boy with his matchless hands and voice hears the truth in his own music, and can't possibly be content down in the fog and the cobbles with only bored rich men and beautiful mechanical girls for an audience. He nods slowly, and holds out a hand in a strangely formal gesture. "William Pennsworth," he says.

"I'm the Doctor," the Doctor returns, grinning and shaking his hand with enthusiasm. "Nice to meet you, Will Pennsworth. Shall we?"

"Out the back, then," Will says, taking his hand back and going on down the dim corridor. They slip through a storeroom to reach a set of stairs leading out onto the street, and though Will seems not at all bothered by them, the Doctor is instantly terribly aware of the motionless eyai girls -- off-duty? wound down? -- lining the walls. Storeroom. The Doctor follows Will up the stairs, frowning.

Will doesn't move like those girls do, the Doctor thinks as they go along one slanted cobbled street and then another toward the TARDIS. But he might not need to. Still -- he lets his hand brush Will's for a moment, and that's blood in his veins, not a trace of silicon in there. No clockwork. That leaves more things unexplained than not, the Doctor thinks, and a grin slides across his face.

When they reach the TARDIS, Will makes no comment on its outside appearance, although he does look at it closely, and touch the wooden side while the Doctor unlocks the door. He peers inside, backs up a step, observes the TARDIS from the outside again, and comes inside all the way. He doesn't say _It's bigger on the inside_. He says, "How much bigger?"

"Very," the Doctor says.

Will simply stands there for a long moment, gazing around him. He says, "I see. It's like the music."

The Doctor grins near to splitting his face. "Yeah."

"I think," Will says, looking up at him, "there is something I would like to show you in the morning."

"Right, course, you need to get a bit of sleep after all that playing," the Doctor says, nodding.

"I'll be back here tomorrow at half eleven," Will says, walking backwards toward the doors.

"Right," the Doctor says again; counts back from six-hundred fifty-nine in primes, which gives Will exactly two minutes to walk away from the TARDIS before he pulls himself forward into the following day, at just before half eleven. He pats the console fondly and throws his overcoat aside, goes down to the doors and opens them to see Will coming up the cobbled street, all the more grimy and derelict in the daylight. The Doctor hops out, locking the TARDIS behind him. "Hello, Will! Rested up?"

"Yes," Will says. "It's only a few Tube stops down."

The Tube's far worse than the streets, but the Doctor doesn't mind; just stands amid the rattling and the flickering light, hands shoved into his pockets to avoid the grime just as Will's are. He wonders how many of their fellow passengers are eyai.

At their stop, Will bounds up the steps ahead of the Doctor towards the filtered daylight, and up top catches his hand on the metal post of the Tube sign and swings around. The Doctor comes up with little more dignity but does omit the signpost. In all this time they haven't spoken, but it's companionable, and not at all startling when Will says, "There," and points across the street at a little shop, dust in the windows.

He follows Will inside; there is no tinkling bell to announce their arrival, and the inside is not so much a display of goods as a riotous mess of useful and useless antiques, rugs and books and spare spaceship parts, all gathered together in chaos. Will watches the Doctor look around and nods a little, mostly to himself. "Anna?" he calls.

A girl appears, in apron and lace-edged dress, a little dusty herself around the edges, blond and beautiful in such a precise and perfect way that the Doctor knows at once she must be eyai. "Hello!" he says. "I'm the Doctor."

"Anna Marsh," she returns, looking him carefully up and down. "I run the shop."

"Eyai with a full name, running a shop?" the Doctor asks, and her chin tilts up a little, but she only says, "Yes."

"Hm." The Doctor glances around; there are broken things, but there are _made_ things, too -- a pair of earrings from dangling scraps, picture frames, a compass: a slow reversal of the mad entropy of the shop, the Doctor thinks. "Anna," he says, "have you made all this?"

"Yes," Anna says again. "I make things." She glances over at Will, a smooth beautiful movement. "Would you care to explain --?"

"He's from off-planet," Will says, and it clicks in the Doctor's head, that strange defensive way Will spoke of the eyai earlier. He's in love with her, and the Doctor's hearts go out to him, for being so foolish and brave. "I thought he might like to have a look around."

"Actually," the Doctor says, setting the compass gently aside. "Anna. Will. Are there many free eyai around here?"

The hesitance from both of them is answer enough.

"_But_," the Doctor says, coming a bit closer to Anna. She doesn't draw away and he nods in approval. "You see? There's no reason for creation to be in any artificial intelligence programming. That's dangerous. But here you are, so you're either the product of a mad scientist or you're capable of _learning_."

Anna nods. "I taught myself how to make things."

"Silicon, silicon -- the moon!" The Doctor beams at them. "That's it. Big old motherboard orbiting around you, and _that's_ your basecode, not whatever's put in by the people who construct your living shape. Bet you wind yourself, too, yeah? Your own key?"

"Actually," Will says, "I've got it." He tugs at a little chain around his neck, neatly hidden by his shirt collar.

"Clever," the Doctor says, although the original gesture might well have been a romantic rather than practical one. "Legally --"

"He doesn't have papers," Anna murmurs, "but it gets us by, yes."

"So," the Doctor says, pacing inasmuch as the clutter will allow, "what we have here is a whole lot of free minds enslaved by their creators -- children trapped in servitude." He looks between them. "How many people are really happy like this? And I don't mean just _ignorant_, I mean how many of them really enjoy living day after day in places like the Gallows?"

"I don't know," Will admits, but Anna says, quiet and firm, "It's terrible."

"Right!" the Doctor says. "Anna, I have this --" he pulls his sonic screwdriver from his pocket "-- and it might tickle a little, but I promise it won't hurt you. May I?" At Anna's graceful nod, he scans her with it, running it past the little port at the base of her neck, over the lock under her collar, along her arm, while her skin shivers a little, although she stays otherwise absolutely still. After a moment the sonic screwdriver picks up a complex frequency -- the base code. "Got it!" the Doctor says, switching it off and pocketing it again. "Will. Is the psallopiano at the Gallows the only one you have access to?" Will nods. "Well, can't be helped. Could I maybe possibly get in during the day and play it?"

"Theoretically," Will says, blinking, "but I thought you said this was the first time you'd seen one."

"I'm a very quick learner," the Doctor says with a grin. "Now come on!"

They come out of the shop with him and head for the Tube station, but Anna's watching him closely. "That frequency you found on me," she says. "What does it do?"

"It's who you are," the Doctor says, starting down the steps. "It's what makes you think."

His words manage it just as well; both Will and Anna are silent on the train, which rattles too much for proper conversation anyway. When they arrive at the Gallow's back entrance in Low Strand, Anna pulls a bit of wire from her dress. The Doctor's already got his sonic screwdriver out but he stops and lets her pick the lock: he's just helping them along, and it's her lock to pick.

In the daylight the back rooms of the Gallows are dusty, all the eyai girls wound down. The Doctor follows Will out onto the stage, watches as the boy makes to sit down at the psallopiano out of habit and stops himself. He turns to the Doctor. "Most people who try just make a great big noise," he warns.

"I'm not most people," the Doctor returns, sitting. Rests his hands gently on the keyboard, one trainer to each pedal, and looks up at the psallostrings. They're vibrating a little all on their own in the still air, potential energy on the verge of release. The instinctive trick, what makes a good human psallopianist, is the ability to make the vibrations harmonious. The mathematical trick is to make them vibrate at a very particular frequency, and the Doctor is very good at maths.

"They say," Will adds, with a peculiar gentle hesitation, "only the mad and the desperate can become psallopianists."

The Doctor looks up at him.

"Good," he says, and begins.

The first notes catch under his skin, snag at it like the first terrifying prickles of regeneration. Playing the psallopiano is entirely different from listening to it: he sees the notes imprinted inside his eyes, _his_, some terrible creation unspooling his life into song, and the Doctor lets it. He breathes in too sharply and carries on, pressing down the pedals, carrying the notes upwards until the strings vibrate and hum and resonate back; a few notes up and the frequency is right, the perfect pitch to call the eyai out into the greater world.

This isn't one of the regenerations where he's particularly inclined towards singing, but he had a classical education and knows what to do, arches himself into the music and throws out his voice, keeping the frequency steady and playing a rise and fall of notes that arc into the words of a dead language: High Gallifreyan in complete patterns, the mathematical symbol-sounds for _freedom_, for _awake_. He's distantly aware of Will's awe, of Anna trembling in sympathy to the sound, but he's made of the music, carried in the music, all of it pulling him further and further in. A last song, he thinks distantly; the Ood said it was coming to an end. And here he is, far from home, recreating his language and losing himself. Each note tears him further asunder, and then, instinctually -- because he has become a psallopianist now -- he knows the song is over, closes it with a dying shout for consciousness, and soars the notes to a close.

Silence.

The Doctor discovers with faint surprise that he's still sitting there, slumped at the psallopiano with Anna leaning a little against its side and Will on the bench next to him, eyes wide.

"That was the best song I've ever heard played," Will says with fervency.

The Doctor swallows; it makes a dry clicking noise. "Why," he says hoarsely. "Why am I still here?"

A small crooked grin passes over Will's face. "The music gives you back in the end."

"Ah," the Doctor says, and stands shakily.

"I'll get you some tea," Will says.

Five minutes and they're sitting at one of the small tables below the stage, the Doctor gratefully gulping down the tea while Will drinks his own cup more slowly and Anna watches, breathing in the steam.

The Doctor thinks of the things he should say; about responsibility, about the upcoming revolution, about how brilliant they both are. He thinks: _You could come with me_. He even sets down his teacup and opens his mouth to say it.

Then the bottom drops out from the world under him and the heavens split wide and in that second, somewhere in the universe, _there is another Time Lord_.

The Doctor leaps to his feet, narrowly avoiding spilling his tea. "I," he says. "I have to --" and can barely even hear himself over the hammering of his hearts. "It's been brilliant," he says, "really, it has -- good luck --" and before eyai or psallopianist can protest, he's dashed off out the door and towards his TARDIS, carried on by hope and fear.


	3. 5x03: Scavenged Pieces

## (London, Earth, 2009)

She takes care of her family first; calls them, makes sure they're all right. Tries Tom, but he's in Africa and receptionless, was supposed to be for the next month until Martha's stay in New York was over. She hopes he'll be on the next flight back. She goes home to her empty flat, fixing herself a bit to eat in the silent kitchen, and wonders if this is how the Doctor felt after she left him. Well. She smiles to herself. He has Donna, and Rose now. Good on him. She calls her mum back. "Let's do family dinner," she says. "Celebrate the world not ending, yeah?"

Leo's more quiet than usual at dinner, looking thoughtful and mostly making sure food makes it into Keisha's mouth instead of her clothes, but Shonara's more than willing to talk aliens with Tish, and Mum and Dad are arguing about the relative hideousness of the bedroom wallpaper and exactly how bad Annalise's taste really was. Martha eats her food and basks in the endless chatter.

In the morning she goes to what's left of UNIT's London HQ.

It's a complete disaster; nearly everything's fried, and Martha doesn't have the technical knowledge to retrieve the backup systems. About thirty members of personnel survived, Colonel Mace among them, to Martha's considerable relief. The first quiet moment she finds, she takes Mace aside. "Sir? I need to talk to you about the Doctor."

"First things first, Dr Jones," Mace says. "Is Project Indigo still viable?"

Martha thinks of the Doctor disabling Jack's vortex manipulator yet again. She does her best to hide a smile. "Absolutely, sir. If we can salvage the backups, I should be able to explain the base code."

He nods. "Now, the Doctor?"

"Yes, sir. He strongly suggested we destroy the Osterhagen weapons, sir."

"That's not up to me," Colonel Mace tells her. "We'll have to take it upstairs." He pauses. "Metaphorically. We had to pull the poor fellow out of retirement, but there's nothing for it."

Martha follows Mace out of the half-destroyed main space and into an office just down the corridor. The man in question, she's surprised to see, either isn't a general or doesn't look like one; he's wearing an old army jacket sans insignia and his entirely white hair is very neatly combed, despite his obvious exhaustion. He looks up from a mess of papers surrounding a laptop and fixes first Colonel Mace, then Martha, with a fiercely intelligent stare. "Yes, Colonel?"

"Dr Martha Jones, sir," Colonel Mace says. "She's here to discuss Osterhagen. Dr Jones, General Sir Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart."

"Retired," the General adds, with a sigh. "Until quite recently. Thank you, Colonel. Come in, Dr Jones."

Mace salutes and leaves Martha alone with the ex-retired General. He types something into the laptop, peering at it while Martha tries not to shuffle her feet. "Please take a seat," he says at length. When Martha does so, he looks up at her again, and smiles suddenly, a staid and slightly quirked affair that makes Martha want to smile back. "According to your file, you're a recommendation of the Doctor's."

"That's right, sir," Martha says. She's used by now to UNIT personnel who have heard of the Doctor.

"Capital fellow," Lethbridge-Stewart says. "And I see no matter how much he changes, his taste in assistants remains consistent." At Martha's raised eyebrows, the smile grows a little. "Only the best, Dr Jones."

"Then you've met him, sir?"

"Oh yes. We've known each other most of our mutual lives, to my occasional horror. Now." Sir Alistair gives her a politely expectant look, which doesn't quite quell Martha's bitten-back smile; but then, she doesn't think it's supposed to. "What about Osterhagen, Dr Jones?"

"The Doctor strongly requested the weapons be destroyed, sir," Martha repeats.

"Of course he did." Lethbridge-Stewart leans back in his chair, considering. "I expect this came about in conjunction with someone nearly using them?"

"That's right, sir. Me." Martha shudders a little. "And I know it's important to have defenses in case the Doctor's not here to stop something huge, but -- sir, it didn't need using against the Daleks in the end, and I reckon there's nothing worse than that."

"I do believe you're right." The General sighs. "There will of course be a great deal of bureaucratic red tape and nonsense, but that's the sort of thing one must deal with in exchange for the world not ending."

"Indeed it is, sir," Martha says with a grin. "Thank you. Er." She hesitates. "Actually I was wondering if I might resign, sir."

His eyebrows go up slightly. "Surely you mean transfer."

Martha blinks. "No, I --"

"Torchwood and UNIT have a certain business relationship, Dr Jones," Lethbridge-Stewart says. "More cordial than not, at the present moment."

"I didn't say I was going to Torchwood," Martha says in surprise.

"Ah." Sir Alistair hesitates only fractionally. "That Captain Harkness fellow let me know over the phone. Transferred on salary at the end of the month, does that sound reasonable to you?"

"More than," Martha says, still a little taken aback. "Thank you, sir."

"Of course," Sir Alistair says, with another of those courteous little smiles. "I hope to see you again, Dr Jones."

"Thank you, sir," Martha says again, and goes.

 

## (Cardiff, Earth, 2009)

"We ain't gonna be able to fit too many more in the cells," Mickey says, sitting down with a thump. At Jack's questioning look, he elaborates, "Weevils. Like space cockroaches."

"Oh, not at dinner," Gwen protests. She and Rhys are just in with the takeaway, to celebrate Tom and Martha's official start at Torchwood, now they're settled into a flat and it's more or less official.

"I don't mind," Rhys says cheerfully. "Pass the chicken? Cheers, Ianto. Can't you put 'em back through?"

"Haven't figured out a way yet," Jack says, a little pointedly, to which Mickey says, "Working on it!" and throws a plastic fork halfheartedly in Jack's direction

In the past week alone they've had a lot more than Weevils. There's been nothing else living, for which Tom and Martha are both a bit grateful; alien autopsies were not really on their list of things to do while moving to Cardiff. As though to make up for this, however, and in something suspiciously close to mocking Tom and Martha while they try to move in all their assorted junk from London, the Rift's been dropping bits of alien tech right, left, and centre. Ianto's been monitoring Rift activity as close to twenty-four seven as he can, Mickey and Jack on Weevil duty, while the rest of them feverishly catalogue space junk of increasingly sophisticated make. Today alone they've tagged and filed some sort of laser gun, some slightly radioactive ballast, a weird hexagonal thing that beeped at random intervals while doing nothing else of note, and, bizarrely, what looked like a metal hairnet.

"Do we have any idea what's causing it in the first place?" Tom asks.

"Probably still overexcited from proximity to the Rift in the Medusa Cascade," Jack says around a mouthful of noodles.

"Charming," Gwen says, grinning. "Anyway, we'll have to be careful. Weddings near the Rift are a really dangerous idea at the best of times."

"Hey," Martha protests, "don't jinx it!"

"Sorry," Gwen says, still grinning. "So! Are you going to change your name? I just couldn't bear the thought of not being Gwen Cooper. Couldn't imagine it."

"I dunno," Martha admits. "Rhys, rescue those noodles for me before Jack eats them all, yeah? Martha Milligan has a bit of a ring to it. On the other hand, two Dr Milligans around the place might get a bit confusing."

"Hey, the more the merrier," Jack puts in, possibly in revenge for his kidnapped noodles.

"So how did you two meet, anyway?" Ianto asks with pointed diplomacy.

Tom and Martha exchange a look.

"Well," Tom says, "the way _I_ know it, I was working at a pediatrics clinic in Camden and some alien bastards decided to start sneaking into kids' bedrooms and inject them with a controlling fluid so they'd go around at night collecting bits of quartz. I didn't know it at the time, obviously. All I knew was children were coming in looking like death warmed over from too little sleep, and with the weirdest blood readings I'd ever taken."

"UNIT got involved," Martha puts in. "Monitoring all sorts of strange activity -- you know that bit. Well, they sent me over cos I was high up in medical. Tom was the only one who'd noticed anything seriously weird was going on."

"We caught some of the aliens together," Tom said with a grin. " UNIT took care of them. Well, I'd believe anything after that, wouldn't I? Still didn't expect she'd ask me out, though." He turns the grin to Martha.

"Back up a moment to the quartz," Mickey interrupts. "What the hell did they want quartz for so bad they were drugging kids?"

"Civil war, would you believe it," Martha says. "They're all deadly allergic to it. That's why they had the kids go out and collect it for them. Kids, obviously, cos they can't fight back as well as grown-ups can."

"So when you say UNIT took care of 'em --" Mickey says, and at Martha's nod he nods too in great satisfaction. "Right. Sorry. Then you went on a date."

Martha shrugs. "It sort of went from there. I just got lucky, I guess."

She sees the contemplative way Jack is looking at her and raises her eyebrows in a silent _shut up, Jack_. He grins and says, "Anyone going to eat the rest of those noodles?"

What Martha isn't going to explain to Mickey and Ianto and Rhys and Gwen, of course, is the way Tom's first meeting with Martha hadn't been Martha's first meeting with Tom. She doesn't like talking about the year that wasn't, not if she can help it. Tom knows, though.

Not forced by circumstance to become a revolutionary, he's by nature a cheerful and self-effacing sort of man, disinclined to shave very often and expecting nothing more out of life than to better the world out in any small way he can, either the children at the clinic or the project in Africa he took after catching a bit of a wanderlust bug having heard some of Martha's adventures in time and space. Because Martha told him. Not right away, of course, but thwarting aliens together had been the perfect reintroduction. Martha hadn't particularly planned to run into him, but she was so delighted to find him alive and well, in the flesh as well as over the phone, that she'd asked him out to dinner then and there. On that first date, she'd discovered he loved a lot of the same books she did and was trying very hard not to become too enthusiastic a sci-fi geek just because he'd seen real aliens. Martha laughed, confessed her love for the Harry Potter books, and told a few alien stories from UNIT. A week later they slept together, and Martha didn't think of the Doctor once the entire time -- which she didn't even realise until she woke up the next morning and discovered Tom in the middle of muddling about her flat making breakfast.

She told him a while later how she'd come to have her UNIT job, and about traveling with the Doctor. It was easier than she'd expected to omit her crush from the story; it was easier than she'd expected to make Tom understand that her love for the Doctor was wonder at the universe and admiration for the things he did. Tom listened, and Tom believed her, and Tom told her she was lucky with such fervency that all the small hurts Martha tried so hard not to store in her heart started smoothing away.

The day Martha realised she loved Tom, just as much as she loved the Doctor and with no comparisons that needed to be made, she sat him down and she told him about the year that wasn't, about how she'd left the Doctor, about how she'd really met Tom. He listened, and held her, and kissed her very gently, and said, "You're the single most amazing person I've ever met."

And in two weeks they're getting married.

It'll be in London -- Martha's managed to convince Jack that the Rift can go unmonitored for an entire afternoon -- Tom's family is invited, mother and sister and nephew and assorted relatives and friends, Martha's massive extended family and mates from school and even a couple people from UNIT who've pulled through. Martha doesn't want it to be fancy, but she's suffered through an afternoon of wedding dresses with Mum and Tish, and the rest of it's up to Mum and Mrs Milligan. Martha figures she'll phone the Doctor on the morning of, so he doesn't have time to think up some way to get out of it. (Well, she supposes he does have the time, but she's hoping he won't think of that.)

That's for worrying about later; now Martha helps the rest of the team clean up the remains of the takeaway. She follows Ianto to the monitors. "Ianto," she says, "we're all moved in now. I can take tonight's shift. Seriously, get a bit of sleep."

"I don't mind," Ianto says mildly.

"Yeah, well, I think Jack's starting to," Martha says, and when Ianto relents and smiles, she does too. "I thought UNIT was a bit mad, but you really outdo yourselves here with the constant work."

"Ah, but we get it done," Ianto says, and leaves Martha at the monitors wondering if most of the conversation had actually been accidental innuendo.

Gwen and Rhys head home. Mickey hovers around talking to Jack until he notices Ianto; then he clears out too. Jack and Ianto vanish shortly after. Tom comes to join Martha at the monitors, two cups of coffee in hand. "I know," he says at Martha's look, "hell to circadian rhythms, and we'll build up a tolerance."

"Also I hate coffee," Martha says, accepting the cup and taking a sip. She makes a face. "We could watch in turns."

"Less fun," Tom decides, settling in against her.

"Mm." Martha cradles her coffee in her hands, staring sightlessly at the CCTV of the Plass. Then she blinks and sits up straight, staring. Standing just in front of the Water Tower, and apparently screaming at the top of her lungs, is Donna Noble. A slightly crumpled and very anxious-looking old man is hovering at her side. Martha's on her feet in an instant and to the paving-stone lift in the time it takes Tom to look closely at the footage and say, "Who's --?"

Martha reaches the surface of the Plass in time to hear Donna shouting, "-- don't let me in right now so help me -- oh. Hello, Martha!"

"It's easier trying through the visitor's centre," Martha offers. "Where's the Doctor?"

Donna laughs, a terrible half-wild sound. Martha sees she's paper-white and shaking, and that the old man next to her has tears in his eyes. "Right here," Donna says, tilting her head a little. "You're a doctor, yeah? I need to get my hands on any alien tech Torchwood's got, and I have maybe five minutes."

"Get on," Martha tells her, and both Donna and the old man come crowding onto the paving slab with her. It starts down. "Five minutes before what?"

"Before my brain --" Donna says, and drags in a shuddering breath. "Before I die. Time for questions after I'm saved, yeah?"

"Got it," Martha says, hearing her own voice switch into steady steel-edged panic. "What can I do?"

"Have you got a sort of -- ooh, a thing sort of halfway between a book and a curling iron?"

"No," Martha says at once, her brain shying away from attempting to picture this.

"Twisty ladder thing? About two feet high? No?"

"Blimey," Martha says, mostly from shock, "you still sound like him. And no, we don't have one of those either."

They come to a grinding halt on the floor of the Hub. The old man pulls off his hat and clutches it in his hands, staring around him. "Here," he says, "this is where you fight them aliens?" Then he visibly pulls himself together and says, "Never mind that. Save my Donna first."

"Right," Martha says. Tom's come over. He doesn't ask questions, but he does give both their guests a confused once-over. "What else?" Martha asks Donna.

"Er, thing that looks like a metal hairnet?"

"N -- yes!" Martha turns to Tom. "Tagged five-fifty-seven in the back room, just in today."

"Right," Tom says, and dashes off.

"What else do you need?" Martha asks.

"Big glass of water," Donna says. She's shaking so hard now that Martha and the old man between them have to help her into a chair. "Nothing else, that's enough. Hairnet, glass of water."

Martha nods and runs to the kitchen. Her thoughts have decided to start counting loudly down from sixty, although she has no idea if it's been near five minutes yet, or even if Donna was only guessing. She gets back with the water at about the same time Tom does with the metal hairnet thing; Donna grabs the water first, and gulps the whole glass down messily without pause. She hands the glass back to Martha, gasps, "Hairnet -- stand back --" jams the proffered hairnet onto her head, and at once bursts into blue-white light too bright to look at. Martha, Tom, and the old man all stumble back, clutching together.

It dies down, and when the afterimages have faded, Donna's still sitting there, upright and gasping and certainly not dead. "Bit more water, if you could?" she whispers.

Martha dashes off to refill the glass, and when she returns and Donna's drunk the water, rather less hastily, a round of introductions are made. The old man is Donna's grandfather Wilf, less rattled than he might be. Martha takes to him at once.

"But what _happened_?" she asks at length.

So Wilf and Donna explain: Donna's brain unable to contain a Time Lord consciousness, the Doctor's emergency erasure and his warning to Wilf; the aliens called Ffsoehi that appeared to Donna and triggered a recollection, Wilf's madcap drive to Cardiff. "Torchwood was the only thing I could think of," Donna explains. "Figured you might've picked up something that would give me a less _final_ sort of solution than the Doctor's."

"Why didn't he just bring you here, then?" Tom asks reasonably.

"S'pose he couldn't think of it," Donna says, shrugging. "Time Lord brain, human gut instinct -- I can think of all sorts of things he can't. And, well, what you had wasn't as sophisticated as I would've liked, but it did the job."

"What _did_ it do, sweetheart?" Wilf ventures.

"It's supposed to pack huge bits of information up very small," Donna says. "ICD. Information Compacting Device. Forty-third century. Very clever. I mean, really it was invented so that people could have whole encyclopedias on access in their minds. Now I got a Time Lord one! Convenient."

"And it won't --?" Wilf asks.

"Shouldn't," Donna says, shrugging. "I dunno. Ooh, this is _brilliant_."

"And the water?" Martha asks.

"Oh, there's all sorts of precautions and safety procedures you're supposed to do before you use an ICD," Donna says offhandedly, "to make sure you process the information at a safe rate. I didn't have time for that, so I drank the water and bam! instant superconductor in my head."

Martha doesn't say _That could have killed you_; it's self-evident, and didn't happen. "Want something ... not water?" she ventures. "Wilf, that's a long drive. We've got a bit of food in the back."

"Yes please," Wilf says, with all the enthusiasm of a man suddenly remembering his appetite after a brush with death -- but before they can make for the kitchen, a familiar mechanical wheezing fills the Hub, and all of them, even Tom who doesn't recognise the sound, turn in time to see the TARDIS fade in.

The Doctor sticks his head out, eyes a bit wild, and catches sight of them. "Oh," he says, and relaxes a little, then double-takes. "_Donna_?"

Donna's mouth twists into a smile. "Hello, Doctor."

"Oh no no no," the Doctor says.

"Oh yes yes yes," Donna returns, rolling her eyes. "All fixed, spaceman!" She holds up the metal hairnet.

"An ICD?" the Doctor says in great disbelief. His eyes go wide. "You didn't! You _did_! Oh, that's clever. Well. Extremely dangerous. Well. Brilliant, though."

"Oh yes," Donna says again, grinning now. "Whatever keeps us running into each other, Doctor, I don't think it's quite finished yet."

"I suppose not," the Doctor says slowly. "No." He blinks and looks around at the rest of them. "Hello, Wilfred! Martha! Er --"

"Thomas Milligan," Tom says. "You must be the Doctor. I'm Martha's fiancé."

"Are you?" the Doctor says. He still looks distracted. "Good, good."

"Are -- are you off again, Donna?" Wilf asks after a moment, looking a little lost.

"Yeah, Gramps." Donna just looks at Wilf for a moment, then leans in and gives him a tight hug. "Sorry about making you drive all the way from London and back."

"Don't worry about that," Wilf says firmly. "Just stop in now and then."

"Course." Donna smiles at him with great fondness before turning to Tom and Martha. "Great to meet you, Dr Milligan. Martha. Thank you both."

"Any time," Martha says. "Although I hope you won't need to do that again."

"Cheers." Donna turns to the Doctor. "Although I thought you would've --"

"Locked on to you instead," the Doctor says. "But if your signal's not interfering --"

"We'd better go, then," Donna says, and the Doctor says, "Right. Quick then," and in a moment they're both back in the TARDIS and it's fading out of sight.

"We only heard about half of that conversation, didn't we," Tom observes.

"Just smiling and nodding's best," Martha says. "It probably wasn't that important. C'mon, Wilf, we'll walk you back out to your car."


	4. 5x04: Daisy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The original and wonderful version of the story Donna tells can be found in the Three serial _Time Monster_. If you haven't seen/heard it, you really should.

## (The Vortex)

"Donna," the Doctor says.

He's practically humming with shock, and the TARDIS is humming with satisfaction. The Doctor can still sense another Time Lord out there, and he already knows, but he forces himself not to panic, makes himself watch as this human woman with all his thoughts in her head runs a proprietary hand over the console and pilots her easily into the liminal space between dimensions.

"Donna," he says, and she looks up at him with his own eyes and all the things that make her Donna Noble glowing through the edges, and she says, "Yeah, it's him."

"Right." The Doctor sinks down carefully on the no-longer-white chair near the console monitor. "So how --?"

"You burned him in the field _behind my house_, you prawn," Donna says, giving him a look that is definitely exasperated and maybe fond. "Talk about coincidences. I'm starting to think it was only the beginning."

"So you -- you had to go home," the Doctor says, and swallows hard. "If he was behind your house you had to find him there, and you had to _be_ there to find him, so I had to take you back --"

"Doctor," Donna says, and he subsides.

Neither of them say any more for a long time. The silence stretches between them, punctuated only by the placid wheeze of the time rotor, until each second becomes a dragging agony. The Doctor opens his mouth. "I --"

"The way I see it," Donna overrides him, so gently it makes him wince a little, "you could've told me right off I wouldn't be able to handle a Time Lord brain very long. Then during all those goodbyes we might've come up with something."

"You didn't want to know," the Doctor says. It comes out accusing.

Donna's lips twist a little. "S'pose I didn't. That's how we take care of things, though, yeah? Ignore it long enough and it might go away."

The Doctor gapes at her. "Now that's just -- _Donna_, you're not telling me saving planets counts as _ignoring_ things --"

"No," Donna says, still in that awful gentle voice. "_Us_, Doctor. Or, well, you. I get a big Time Lord brain I can't possibly handle and I hope maybe if I don't look too closely it won't be a problem. That's you."

"That's not --" the Doctor protests, but even in his own ears the indignation's a bit feeble.

"Yeah it is." Donna sits down on the edge of the console. "Now, I'm not saying you thought it, and, yeah, erasing it all was the only way you could be sure I wouldn't die, but I think you don't want someone who knows absolutely everything about you." She watches him expectantly for a moment, and when he says nothing, goes on, "But it's all packed away." For the first time a grin comes across her face. "I mean, 's not like I'm going to embarrass you with the story of that time Drax took the sub-dimensional transit coils and stuck them --"

"Oi!" the Doctor interrupts, sitting up straight. "If you're not going to tell the story don't tell the story! Especially that one." He subsides back in the chair. "And -- yeah. Don't do that. Really. Don't."

"Sorry," Donna says, not looking it, but a good deal of tension seeps from the air between them. "Really, I promise, I don't _want_ to go through your thousand years of dirty laundry. Now! He can't have left the planet."

"Right!" the Doctor says, jumping to his feet and coming to stand next to her at the console. He ignores the knowing sideways look she throws him. "And he won't have stayed in Britain -- too many people would recognise him. Where else would he go? On this planet, Donna, what else would be --?"

"Funny?" Donna tilts her head, considering. "Can't you sense him?"

"Well, yeah, he's here and now but it's just one little planet," the Doctor says, "and, no offence, Donna, you're sort of whispering away there too, which gets everything a bit muddled."

"Build a new Zero Room if I'm so loud," Donna returns, disgruntled, and types in a command code for crosschecks between places on Earth the TARDIS has landed coupled with any encounters with other Time Lords. An excess of five thousand hits pops up; the Doctor slips on his specs and edges her out of the way, typing in a further command to eliminate all the hits for Great Britain. The list immediately narrows to around ninety. Not looking at Donna, the Doctor carefully filters out the counts the TARDIS has made for Romana, which leaves about sixty entries. Donna leans in to look them over. "San Francisco," she says, and blinks. "Uh, Doctor? All -- all the writing's still in Gallifreyan, isn't it?"

The Doctor double-takes. "I think it is, yeah." This realisation makes his chest feel a little funny, and the wry look on Donna's face comforts him. "So! San Francisco? Why do you say that?"

"Well, it would be funny," Donna says dryly.

The Doctor sighs and pockets the specs. "Yeah, you're right there. How does tomorrow morning sound? It'll give him enough time to get there."

"Right," Donna says, and together they dart about the TARDIS, three panels a piece and she's locked onto coordinates in half the time.

 

## (Berkeley, Earth, 2009)

They emerge just off a bike path on a sunny field that slopes down to a road and what is recognisably a city. The Doctor frowns. "I don't think this is quite --"

"Hey," someone interrupts him. He turns to see a young woman who is at least half piercings eyeing the TARDIS with interest. "That was a seriously sweet trick. You an illusionist or something?" Before the Doctor can answer, a fluttering piece of paper is shoved into his hand. "Poetry reading Tuesday night. Bring your friend."

She wanders off before the Doctor can say anything to this, either. He turns to Donna. "What a peculiar person."

"Give me that," Donna says, snatching the flyer. "Telegraph Avenue. Doctor. San Francisco Bay, yeah. San Francisco, no." She looks over her shoulder at the TARDIS. "Think she did it on purpose?"

"Mm, possible." The Doctor looks around. It's a lovely day, students are sharing the wide lawn with a number of fearless squirrels, and the back of his head is full of singing conviction. "Probable, in fact. Sorry, where are we exactly? Berkeley? What's Berkeley have?"

"Besides hippies?" Donna shrugs.

"We're at the university -- oh!" He whirls on her with a grin. "Got it! Physics, Donna, the university has one of the best physics laboratories in the world!"

"Great," Donna says. "He's going to blow us all up. Well, let's go, then." She goes over to the nearest student sprawled out on a blanket surrounded by textbooks. "Excuse me? We're looking for the physics lab?"

The student rolls over and squints up at her. "You mean Lawrence?" He waves a hand. "Up the hill, east side of campus. You can't miss it. Just look for the big dome."

"Thanks," Donna says, and turns back to the Doctor. "That way. C'mon."

They set off in the general direction indicated. It's harder going than advertised, as seemingly every other building in the university complex seems determined to get in their way. Navigating this maze does provide a welcome distraction, though, as the humming awareness in the Doctor's head grows exponentially and the feeling trying to claw its way up inside him is steadily less easy to classify as hope, beginning the slow slide into terror. On the one hand, he was right after all: the Master wasn't about to die, not really, not after all this time. On the other hand, it marked the first time he was completely unable to get through to the Master at all; it might well continue that way. If he can't get the Master to see reason, to understand how everything's changed now --

"Hey," Donna says, elbowing him gently. The Doctor starts from his thoughts to see Donna giving him a wry look. She can probably guess what he's thinking. He looks away. "No," Donna says. "Stop that. Look at me, Doctor. Look at me."

He does, only a little unwillingly, and blinks in surprise. Donna's plucked a daisy from a nearby flowerbox, and is holding it out to him, pink-white and yellow and with one petal missing. "Donna, you shouldn't pick other people's flowers."

"Take it," Donna says, so he does.

"Thanks?" he ventures.

She rolls her eyes and resumes walking. "You can't possibly have forgotten this. Trust me. Filing system in my head? That's one of the items that's flagged important."

"Er." The Doctor catches up with her and tries to think of it. "International ... pick the Americans' flowers if you're in the United States day?"

"_No_." Donna glances at him and sighs. "All right. Let's jog that big brain of yours. I'm going to tell you a story."

"Donna ..." the Doctor protests halfheartedly, but she holds up a finger, so he just sighs and keeps walking, twirling the stem of the flower.

"Why do you save the world, Doctor? Really."

"Someone has to," the Doctor says; this is obvious.

"No," Donna says. "You save the world cos of that little daisy there. Or, well, not that one particularly. Just -- remember when you were young. Really young. The day you left Verity crying and went into the mountains."

"Donna --" the Doctor says again, his voice sticking a little this time.

"The suns were blinding over the Citadel," Donna goes on quietly; they've stopped, are standing together under a tree on a sloping sidewalk in an unfamiliar city, and Donna's looking at him but she's looking past him too, through centuries into half-dark places the Doctor can never return. "It soaked up all the light and the mountain was so grey. And you thought --" Her eyes snap to his and she stops.

"I know this part," the Doctor whispers.

"Then you'll remember the monk who lived on the mountainside," Donna says, her face sliding into a smile again. "You were crying too, and you asked what the point was, really. If this was really all there was. And that dear monk ..." She raises a hand and points to the daisy the Doctor's clutching, echoing the monk's gesture through all these centuries. "Yeah?"

The Doctor nods slowly. Urgency and fear are still tangled up together in his head, but Donna's watching him with such expectant earnestness. "I know the story, Donna." Remembers seeing how incredibly daisy-like the daisy was, the clearness of the air, the brilliant red-gold of the sunlight off the Citadel and the patches of snow on the mountains. It's always easiest to remember Gallifrey's beauty when he can't reach it.

"Not anymore you don't," Donna says. "I thought you did, really -- you took me to see the creation of the Earth, and it was _wonderful_, but -- I _know_ \--"

"Donna," the Doctor says, through clenched teeth now. "I want you to stop looking through my thoughts."

"I know what you've been through," Donna presses, "I _know_, Doctor, but you've got to remember all the wonderful things or when we find the Master, he'll --"

"Donna," the Doctor says again, grabbing her shoulders this time. "I'm all right, and no, it's not secret Time Lord code for anything. I'm _fine_."

It sounds stupid even to him, and the daisy's crushed against her jacket, but Donna nods, just nods and turns from him and keeps walking. The Doctor takes a deep breath and sets off after her. Mixed in with the panic now is something else, extra awareness of the city around them: sunlight on leaves, a hundred thousand heartbeats, the small grumblings of the faultline underfoot. He wishes Donna had said nothing, because it _is_ beautiful, it is wonderful and vivid and small and important, and it all settles over him like a great weight. Donna has all his memories but when she saved herself she pared it down into human understanding, a human ability to process him. She means so well.

He plucks another daisy from a planter as they pass it, and threads it through the buttonhole of his suit jacket. Well. It's more stylish than celery, anyway.

A few minutes on they've risen above the noise of the city proper and arrived at one of the entrances to the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. There's a guarded little gate that leads inside, and a young man leans out to say, "Afternoon, folks."

"Afternoon," the Doctor says, pulling out the slightly psychic paper. "John Smith, visiting professor, and my assistant, Dr Noble."

The guard takes the slightly psychic paper and shines a little blue light at it, then hands it back with a nod. "Welcome to the lab. Hey, are you here with Professor Brooks?"

"Possibly," the Doctor says, scrunching his nose and shrugging. "English bloke? Nice suit?"

"That's him," the guard agrees. "You'll probably find him in lab three downstairs."

"Thank you," the Doctor says. "You've been extremely helpful."

They head inside. The sound of Donna's heels echo back at them, and after a moment she loops her arm through the Doctor's. "I didn't mean --" she starts, and the Doctor says, "I know," and Donna says, "Good," and they keep walking. Down a set of stairs, they're stopped by another guard, this one a bored-looking woman who looks like she won't tolerate any nonsense. Another flash of the psychic paper and a "Dr Smith, Dr Noble," gets them in through a set of doors sensibly labeled _authorized personnel only_.

"You might call yourself something else once in a while," Donna observes.

"Why?" the Doctor says, glancing at her. "I like it. Functional."

There's a loud bang just ahead of them, and a young woman who looks much like their earlier student encounter, mercifully sans the piercings and plus a lab coat, backs out into the corridor accompanied by a great deal of smoke. "_Drat_." She catches sight of Donna and the Doctor. "Oh, hi. Sorry about the mess. Technical difficulties."

"Yes, I can see that," the Doctor says, his eyebrows going up. "I don't suppose you know where we might find Professor Brooks?"

"Are you with him?" the young woman asks, her face lighting, and without waiting for an answer goes on happily, "I'm so excited to be working with one of the foremost temporal physicists in the world." She seems to realise she sounds like a textbook, and blushes a little, then hurries on, "I'm Shana Waldman; I'm working with him on this project. Well." She throws a rueful glance back into the room. "Trying to, anyway. He's a door down working on the equations, so I suggest you don't disturb him right now."

"Nah, don't worry, he's always pleased to see me," the Doctor says. At worst this Brooks won't be the Master after all, but while Berkeley is usually ahead of the game on nuclear physics, temporal physics is still a bit of a joke. That Shana's talking about it seriously bodes interestingly, if not necessarily badly. He exchanges a glance with Donna, who's thought it too and nods a little.

"Why don't you show me where you think your experiment might've gone wrong, Shana," she says, and pulls the student back into her lab. The Doctor smiles to himself, takes a deep breath, and goes one door down. He knocks.

"Not now, Miss Waldman!" comes the reply, faintly annoyed, in a voice the Doctor would recognise anywhere now. He opens the door, slips inside this new room, and shuts it.

"I'm not Miss Waldman."

The Master, lab coat a little absurd over his suit, whirls from the whiteboard on which he'd been writing, his face registering surprise for a brief moment before slipping into a mocking smile. "Doctor. Really, you're losing your touch."

"Oh, I dunno," the Doctor says, leaning back against the door. "One day? That's a bit better for me than eighteen months, don't you think?"

The Master purses his lips in mock thought. "Possibly," he concedes. "On the other hand, in days of old it was only the High Council that left mind-wiped humans scattered about like so much clutter. Speaking of, where's your charming mind-twin? Has her head exploded?"

"She's fine," the Doctor says steadily, and notes with some interest the flicker of -- relief? no, that's giving him too much credit; satisfaction, perhaps -- that crosses the Master's face at this news. "What's today's plan? Step down from ruling the world, I must say."

It's a cheap jibe, but it does the trick. The Master sneers and steps aside from the whiteboard. "I thought it might be fun to rip a hole in spacetime just where the Earth was."

"Why?" the Doctor asks, honestly floored by this. "You'd get sucked through along with the rest of the planet." He gives the Master a close look. "You know, there are easier ways to get my attention."

The Master laughs. "Don't flatter yourself." He tilts his head a little. "Anyway, you're assuming I want to live. Maybe I delight only in destruction."

"Yeah," the Doctor says, "sorry, you had your chance with that one. I'm still wondering, though, did you tell Lucy to shoot you, or did she do that cos she hated you?"

"It was entirely a shock to me," the Master assures him. "I had a biodata backup put on that ring the moment I ran for office, just in case Archangel wasn't a hundred percent and I found myself without a Toclafane." He grins again at that little joke. "I didn't want to get rid of this body, not when I'd have to go around _reminding_ everyone who I was after that. I expected you'd go to all sorts of stupid lengths to find me. I also expected you to work it out, by the way, but I suppose you were too busy grieving." The grin widens. He shoves his hands in the pockets of his lab coat, takes them out again, taps the dry-erase marker against his thigh. "Was it good? Letting that last little bit of Gallifrey go? Telling yourself there was nothing you could have done?"

"No," the Doctor says, and swallows. "I hated it."

The Master considers. "So what now? 'Come with me?' Go on."

"Come with me," the Doctor says without hesitation.

"What did you say? We can fight our way across the universe?" The Master turns back to the whiteboard, uncapping his marker again, and scrawls on a blank space; not the geometry of Gallifreyan writing, but its transliteration into Earth's Arabic numerals, a careful equation of Time Lord concepts. The set for the word meaning _travel_, with the underlying idea of _interference_ \-- usually represented negatively, here inverted; the set for _me_, in the most arrogant of equations for the personal pronoun; the set for _you_, in the possessive, underlined, _mine_. The Master brackets them all neatly, adds an equals sign, and turns to the Doctor with an expectant look.

The Doctor sighs. "Can't we just _talk_?"

"Aren't we?" the Master asks mildly. He waggles the dry-erase marker in the Doctor's direction.

"You got my equation wrong."

The Master laughs. "Then assume this --" he taps _me_ "-- represents the Doctor, and this --" pointing to _you (mine)_ "-- is the Master. Does that satisfy?"

"Just -- will you come with me?"

The Master looks at him for a long moment, blank-eyed. Then he spins back to the board and writes, far more messily, the other side of the equation, this time in the wide scrawl of Gallifreyan geometry: the perfectly balanced concept of _life/death_, all by itself on the board, looking strange and alien next to all the little Earth numerals. He turns back to the Doctor.

"And where does Miss Noble fit into this equation?" he asks.

"I don't know," the Doctor admits; with a small, proud smile: "She's something new."

"Is she?" The Master's lips quirk slightly. "I thought she was a mirror."

"Stop it," the Doctor says. "Just -- please. Let's get away from this planet."

Another loud bang overrides whatever answer the Master has. He rolls his eyes, and is clearly about to say something disparaging about Shana when the rolling backwash hits them, a veritable flood of temporally-charged ions. The Master swears and darts past the Doctor to the door; they run together into the corridor and through to the laboratory room next door. Shana Waldman is standing alone in the middle of the room, stiff with shock.

"What happened?" the Master demands.

"I -- I don't know," she gasps. "Dr Noble said -- she said she could see where I'd gone wrong, and she rewired -- I don't know what she did but she powered it up and I said -- I said we should wait for you but she went ahead anyway and then she just _vanished_ \-- just -- a big bright light and she _vanished_ \--"

The Doctor runs to the bank of readout dials. It's painfully unsophisticated, but it hasn't blown any holes in spacetime. Still, the destination field is completely unspecified; as far as he knows, Donna has been ripped through the Vortex unprotected and could be literally anywhere.

He becomes aware of the Master looking at the readout over his shoulder. "Stupid," the Master says. "Donna Noble has your brain, all right."

"We need to find her," the Doctor says.

The Master looks at him for a long moment, thoughts on high speed. The Doctor realises he has an escape route right here, if Donna's already vanished, so it's to his great astonishment that the Master says, quite calmly, "The TARDIS can track her. What are we waiting for?"

_We_. It takes the Doctor a moment to process that he's not hearing the word in English, but in a nearly dead language of infinite complexity; _we_, the personal, _you belonging to me; me belonging to you; both of us bound by Time together_. The Master's face is set in stubborn challenge.

The Doctor swallows.

He says, in the same language, "Let's go."


	5. 5x05: Three-Dimensional Chess

## (The Vortex)

Racing down the hill past astonished students and into the TARDIS, which murmurs with faint unease, the Master spares a moment to wonder what he thinks he's doing. Lab coat tossed over a railing, he watches the Doctor run about the console, pulling levers and pressing buttons and full of desperate focus, and he stops wondering. He's getting his hands, if not on, then near a TARDIS, and he's finding out what's happened to frankly intriguing Donna Noble, and he's here to find out in as much detail as possible if the terrible empty space in the Doctor's mind is his doing.

"How did that machine of yours work?" the Doctor asks over his shoulder as the TARDIS rumbles to life.

"Inelegantly," the Master replies, leaning back against the railing. "I would have needed at least a week to perfect it. I only started setting it up this morning. It's entirely likely Miss Noble is outside of spacetime altogether."

The Doctor types something frantically; then his shoulders slump. "I can't get a trace."

Interesting. "How easily the Doctor admits defeat."

"Stop it," the Doctor says, which really doesn't disprove the Master's point.

The Master sighs. "Cast out a wider net. She might have created a time pocket. Check for snags." When the Doctor simply blinks up at him, he snaps, "Do I have to do everything myself?" and strides up to the console.

"No, don't, I have it on isomorphic --" the Doctor protests, a second too late; the Master snatches his hand back from the console with a yelp at the shock. Bewilderingly, the Doctor does the same.

"What did you --?" they say as one, and at that moment the console monitor flickers to life. They scramble over to it.

Donna's face blinks out at them. "Doctor?"

"Donna!" The Doctor grips the sides of the monitor. "Where are you? Are you all right?"

"I'm fine." She leans in close to the screen. "Is the Master with you?"

The Master edges in next to the Doctor. "How very thoughtful of you to test my machine, Miss Noble."

"Right. Good." Donna looks tired, and if there's a room behind her, it's entirely white and featureless. "Listen, both of you: you've got to stay together. I don't care what you do or how many planets you feel like taking over, Master, I'm starting to think literally the fate of the universe is going to rest on both of you being in the right place at the right time."

The Master snorts. "Bit over-dramatic, isn't she?"

Donna grins ruefully. "Yeah, well."

"Hang on, Donna," the Doctor says, frowning, "how did you remote-link like this? You'd need massively advanced technology."

"Yeah," Donna says, looking remarkably shifty at this. "Got to go."

"Donna --" the Doctor says, but the image has already flickered out.

"So." The Master leans back against the console, which doesn't shock him this time, but doesn't respond any other way either. "You get to keep me after all. Congratulations, Doctor."

"What -- you _believe_ her?"

He does. "Well, I wouldn't go so far as _that_." The Master grins. "You don't really think I'm not interested in hearing that the fate of the universe rests on my involvement? No, it is a _bit_ interesting, wouldn't you say?"

The Doctor fidgets. "What happened to that refusal to spend your life imprisoned with me?" He won't look at the Master. Interesting. In the Master's timeline, those words were spoken not two days ago. For the Doctor ...

"How long has it been?" the Master asks quietly, ignoring the Doctor's question for the rhetorical plea it is.

Hands jammed into his pockets, defensive: "About a year."

Only with the greatest of self-control does the Master refrain from laughing. "Tell you what," he says. "We haven't caught up in the longest time, and I was a really _terrible_ host. You know how it is, ruling a planet really does take precedence over those little courtesies. I'd love to hear all about this year of yours. What do you say we have some tea and biscuits and catch up?"

The Doctor stares at him. "You are joking."

"Mm." The Master pretends to consider this. "No. Serious as a heart attack. Well. As a human heart attack? No. Serious as a really sloppy temporal paradox. Never mind. Tea and biscuits, Doctor."

He sets off down the helix staircase in search of a kitchen. As expected, after a few requisite seconds the Doctor stops doing a stunned puppy impression and starts in on the lonely, love-starved puppy following its master impression. Charming, really.

Two levels down he finds something that at least approximates a kitchen, in that it holds a twenty-third century Food-O-Matic that produces substandard tea, a cupboard (its dimensions exactly the same on the inside and outside) containing a dusty but serviceable biscuit tin, a table from sixteenth-century Spain, and twentieth-century plastic lawn chairs. The Master sprawls out in one of these and has poured tea for them both by the time the Doctor sidles into the room. "Plenty for all," the Master greets him.

The Doctor sits down carefully and accepts a cup, but he makes no move to drink it, and there it sits cooling to the temperature of his hands. "Donna might be right," he says. "All sorts of strange coincidences happen around her. And -- well, I thought we'd hit the buildup point, but then she found you and got her memory back -- _permanently_, I still don't know how she managed without dying -- so now, well, she's massively important and I can't imagine what it's leading to."

"Saving the universe, probably," the Master says dismissively. "With virtue as its own reward and all that rubbish." Still, he can sense what the Doctor's talking about, the warp threads of Time pulling in tight around them and fanning out to critical points unknown. Obviously he's very important, but it flatters him to feel the universe sitting up and taking notice. He sighs and knocks back his tea, not actually tasting it, which is probably a blessing. "Let's find out more, then."

"Donna obviously didn't want us to come after her --"

"No," the Master says, rolling his eyes. "Let's find a reliable prophet."

The Doctor's shoulders go stiff. Under normal circumstances the Master wouldn't blame him; neither of them have ever been particularly fond of binding up their fates with any foreknowledge of their personal futures, especially as most really accurate prophecies are the obnoxiously self-fulfilling sort. Given the right effort, too, any Time Lord out of his first century and even some with an innate ability can (could, back in those days when Time Lords were around to do such things) trace the various threads of potential and extrapolate likely outcomes. Neither the Doctor nor the Master has ever put much effort into being good at this, though. The Master wouldn't even be suggesting a sneak peek at their personal futures now except for an overwhelming need to know the circumstances of his ... stay ... with the Doctor. Either he's fated to get away, in which case he can rest easy in the knowledge, or he's fated to be imprisoned with the Doctor for whatever length of time, in which case, well, it's predestined and there's no point wasting energy on escape attempts. He studiously ignores the circular logic inherent, and gives the Doctor a glare. "Go on."

"The last few prophecies I've heard ended in death," the Doctor says, the words seemingly dragged out against his will. "No more."

"Oh, well, everything does eventually," the Master says dismissively, and grins. "Except me, of course." He springs to his feet and pockets the biscuit tin. "What do you propose, then? Do we stay here until fate or Donna Noble come knocking on the door?"

"Well, I can't let you _out_," the Doctor says reasonably.

"Not even on some remote little planet where no one would notice us? No?" The Doctor just keeps looking at him with steady patience, which is ridiculous, so the Master throws up his hands and stalks from the room.

Whether the Doctor follows him, he doesn't pay enough attention to know. He walks tensely along one curving corridor and another, and somewhere along the way the stiff walk turns into a stroll. His own TARDIS is at the end of the universe, a rickety derelict Type 50 stolen in the war and blown out from the reentry into times unknown. When he'd taken the Doctor's, she'd been fighting against him all the way. Now, with the Doctor back and the Master posing no immediate threat, she's idling in the Vortex, and even without any telepathic connection to her the Master finds himself relaxing a little. Time Lords and TARDISes are meant to be together, and grudgingly as he admits it, the Doctor's taken obsessively good care of this old thing. The Master presses his hand to a wall, enjoying the hum of the engine, and wanders along until he's offered a door.

Through the door the Master finds the vault of a game room.

His eyebrows go up. If the TARDIS is trying for subtle, it's missed the mark a bit. Still. He wanders inside, past a tottering pile of board games (Cluedo, Galactic Monopoly, R.O.U.S.-Trap, all the usual nonsense he expects a man like the Doctor would collect over the course of a millennium) and into the wide space kept bare for more difficult endeavours. "What do you think?" he asks, his voice echoing a little, not turning around.

A fractional hesitation and he hears the Doctor walk into the room. "Haven't been in here since Martha beat me at tennis," he says.

The Master snorts, still not turning, and tips his head back to squint at the ceiling, arched above and studded with roundels. "Course she did. That body, it's a miracle you're not tripping over your own legs every step you take."

When the Doctor says nothing to this, he turns. The Doctor's standing by a stack of board games, hands jammed in his pockets and looking a bit lost. It's fascinating, really, how different he is than when the Master last saw him. Or -- no. Not different, not from those last moments the Master remembers being cradled in his arms, the panic in his face and tears clinging to his lashes. It's been a year for the Doctor and in all that time -- with Donna, the Master assumes, with the accidental creation of nearly a fellow Time Lord, and the hundred other nice cuddly Doctory things the Doctor must have done -- all that time and under the Doctor's careful-casual stance, under the mild look on his face, just beneath the surface he's still crumpled up and shaking from suppressing his sobs. The Master can _see_ it, and in the moment of realisation the thrill is so great he can't breathe.

But it's only a moment, and he's able to say, with absolute composure, "Don't just stand there, then. If you're determined to keep me, at least keep me entertained."

"You want to play a game," the Doctor says, a little disbelievingly.

The Master smiles faintly. "Do we ever do anything else?"

For a moment he thinks the Doctor's actually going to leave. Then the Doctor shrugs loosely and comes the rest of the way into the room. "I was under the impression it's been a bit more serious than that for a while."

"Nonsense," the Master returns dismissively. He wanders further into the room. "Tell me you're in possession of something more intellectual than children's games and sports equipment."

"I quite like Cluedo," the Doctor says, sounding a bit affronted.

The Master grins, although his back is to the Doctor again, which is a small blessing. "I don't suppose you'd agree to a game of chess," he says.

"Maybe," the Doctor replies warily, which of course means _yes_. A hesitation, and he adds, "Rules?" to which the Master grins. That question is the first overture to the game.

Chess, the sort they're talking about, has essentially the same rules as the European version on Earth, except that they, as Time Lords, have no real need for a board -- they can hold the pattern in their minds -- nor a grid. A game might last several hours to several months, and where humans might use carved bits of wood, this three-dimensional version uses living moving sentient beings. Theoretically.

They'd invented it together, long ago in a fit of boredom while studying the cultures of the lower beings and thinking up ways to improve upon their technologies, entertainments, anything. Back then they'd still adhered to the tenet of nonintervention, and late nights playing their invented and adapted game had been purely in the abstract. Later -- much later, and on very different terms -- they'd played just one game for real, to distract them both from exile. But that was long ago.

"Rules," the Master repeats, turning to face the Doctor. "Well, obviously if you won't let me off the TARDIS, this is going to be an entirely theoretical game."

The Doctor tugs over a sports chest and sits down on the lid. "Obviously."

Offered nothing, the Master simply sits half-sprawled on the shiny floor. "For my king I'll take ..." he hesitates, nearly says _the Dalek Emperor_ just for a rise, but it's not even funny to him. The king needs to be something capable of defending itself, not actually invincible, and limited enough to be most useful outside of battle. "Orived Six," the Master decides, naming a sentient planetoid. Planets are always fun to wage war over. "For my queen, Martha Jones." He grins at the surprise on the Doctor's face. "Fool me once ... Go on, if she can get the better of me I'm not leaving her to the likes of you."

The Doctor shrugs. "For my king, the TARDIS. For my queen, Donna."

"Oh, that's hardly fair," the Master protests; "I already know they're off to form an alliance and that will never do."

"You shouldn't have chosen Martha, then," the Doctor says mildly. He props his chin in his hands and adds, offhandedly, "The one game we played real-time -- did I win?"

"Not if you have to ask," the Master returns. He shifts a little on the ground, trying to find a more comfortable way to sit, gives up, and sprawls out on his back; vulnerable but for the way the Doctor actually draws his knees in a bit, gives him space. "Forfeits?"

"I win, you don't try escaping," the Doctor says at once, so the Master knows why he agreed to this game in the first place. Charming. The Doctor doesn't actually want to leash him.

"I win," the Master says after a moment, "we go to a planet of my choosing."

Even if he loses he'll get out of the TARDIS for a while, but he really does hate to lose. "Now," he says, "for bishops ..."

Four hours later, the room is an unholy mess.

Scattered tennis balls delineate an asteroid field; the board games variously indicate a conglomeration of hive-ships, a battle fleet of Cybermen, and the Thirteen Wondrous Worlds. Between them the Doctor and the Master have rigged up a massed crisscrossing of string to indicate the various timestreams, and somewhere in hour two the Doctor scrounged up a whiteboard, wherein they're recording the vastly complicated score. Martha and Donna have indeed teamed up, and have tricked the Guardians into keeping watch over Orived Six while they pilot the TARDIS through the asteroid field to rescue UNIT from the Cybermen. Martha, the Master insists, is really involved in an elaborate scheme to use Cybertechnology in a bid to advance Earth's defense systems by thousands of years. The Doctor is quite sure Donna's onto this plan, but hasn't yet decided whether to thwart it.

He scribbles down the latest score and pauses.

The Master leaves off hanging his latest bit of string and strolls over. There on the board is one of the arbitrary numbers they'd agreed on lifetimes ago as meaning a draw. He's a little disappointed, or -- no, that's the Doctor's disappointment he's picking up. Only four hours and the game's already over, which means the easy arguing and petty machinations are going to become suddenly real again.

It also means the Master's not supposed to run away. He usually enjoys breaking promises, but at the moment he doesn't really have anywhere to run away _to_, and his last attempt has certainly done enough damage to be fascinating for a while yet. "So," he says. "I get to pick our landing spot."

"Yeah," the Doctor says, rubbing the back of his neck. After a moment he notices his tie has come undone in the excitement, and ducks his head to studiously do it back up.

Someplace with spaceships? No, he'd be laughably easy to track down. He takes a deep breath and says the first thing that comes to his head. "Let's go to Betelgeuse and get really pissed."

The Doctor glances up at him, a look of complete wide-eyed innocent freckly surprise. "Yeah, all right," he says.

 

## (Betelgeuse Seven, Alpha Orionis, 14,237)

The problem with a Time Lord metabolism is that, even after drinking enough for a lesser being to experience the sensation of having its brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick, both the Doctor and the Master have quite a few bits of brain left and are capable of coherent speech.

They both order seconds, which makes the tentacled barthing give them an extremely nervous look out of three of its eyestalks.

"What about the other forfeit?" the Doctor asks, nursing this second glass, which bubbles gently.

In the event of a tie, additional forfeits are made: one question truthfully answered apiece. They've ignored that particular rule for centuries, and the Master doubts the Doctor would even have asked if he hadn't been feeling a _little_ lemon-and-bricky. The Master squints into his own drink, which thankfully does not squint back, and considers. "Fine," he says. "You ask first."

The Doctor fixes him with a look. "Would it really be as bad as all that?" he asks. At the Master's blank stare he seems to remember he's left something critical out of the question, and elaborates, "In the TARDIS with me. I mean, there's winning and then there's going a bit far, don't you think? So -- it wouldn't _really_ be that bad."

Carefully sorting the question out from this ramble, the Master considers whether the harsh truth or hope will be more painful to the Doctor in the long run. Then he wonders what the harsh truth is, exactly. He sighs, and doesn't meet the Doctor's eyes, and says, "It's not so bad so far," which probably isn't a lie.

The Doctor beams at him, so disgustingly open and affectionate that the Master makes a note to be sure this is the Doctor's last drink. Not stubbornly hiding behind walls is one thing, but if the Doctor's really this pleased to have him about he's definitely done _something_ wrong.

"Right," he snaps, "my turn," and watches the Doctor flicker immediately into alarm. That's a bit better. He thinks carefully.

"Would you do it again?" he asks. Unlike the Doctor, he doesn't have to elaborate. The Time War quietly underlies all the things they don't say.

The Doctor visibly sobers. "I don't know."

"Cheating," the Master says.

"No, but I really don't," the Doctor insists. "It was the only thing to do, but I don't know if that makes it the right thing, and if I don't even know _that_ \-- well --"

He watches the Doctor's face and sees for a moment the mobile grief on it, sees that the Doctor has changed, after all: sees that his own death in the Doctor's arms has unlocked something, and that ever since the Doctor has been counting every last dead body, some insane stupid turnabout from denial to what the Doctor must think is acceptance, crushing himself down and down in his own guilt. The Master can't help it; he actually laughs. He laughs and points a steady finger at the Doctor and says, "You, sir, are madder than I."

"Excuse me!" the Doctor says, pulling back and pulling in and closing off until he's nothing but affronted, his hair quivering a little over his forehead.

"Well," the Master says, knowing this will only make things worse, "_I_ think you did the right thing."

The Doctor knocks back the rest of his second drink and gets a bit wobblingly to his feet. The Master still feels fine, if a little fuzzy around the edges, so either the Doctor's skinny body isn't coping so well or he's faking it. When the Master gets to his feet and the Doctor nearly at once latches onto his shoulder for balance, he decides the Doctor _must_ be faking it -- no, must not, because he certainly wouldn't do _that_ ... would he? The Master sighs. He's getting a bit of a headache already, and when he gets headaches, the drums never, ever help.

Worse, there's something terrible and comforting about the Doctor leaning on him like this. He doesn't move to support the Doctor's (fairly inconsiderable) weight, but he doesn't push the Doctor off, either.

"Idiot," the Master tells him. "Now I'm going to have to keep you from piloting the TARDIS for the next few hours or you'll crash-land us somewhere and the Judoon will give us a bloody parking ticket."

"For being space hooligans," the Doctor agrees. "Good word, hooligans. Fun to say. Hooooligans."

They're both too old for this. "I hate you," the Master reminds him, just for good measure, and they set off back to the TARDIS.


	6. 5x06: Emergency Temporal Shift

Donna sits up slowly, bruised and aching and trying to remember what's going on. She's in some sort of corridor, immaculately white and evenly lit. Somewhere far to her right there are windows, and the sky outside seems to be the wrong colour, although she can't quite figure out how. Now. What the hell is happening?

A short while ago she was at the Lawrence Berkeley lab, she knows that. She'd been poking about with the wires and the readouts, partly to look like a proper scientist and partly because she _can_ now, all the bits of information packed into her brain that cause her to understand transduction and temporal flux and physics in six dimensions. She spotted something fascinating and peculiar in one of the readouts: just a funny little wiggle, indicating a sort of patch from another timeline, something the machine couldn't possibly have picked up because it shouldn't _exist_. So Donna fiddled with a few more wires until she had a hook on the bit of misplaced timeline, and all she'd really meant to do was get a clearer reading, but she must have overcompensated -- or the accidental bit of time is a lot bigger than it looked -- because rather than pulling information _out_, it had pulled her _in_, and --

What happened next?

She has a headache coming on, although thankfully it's not a keeping-a-Time-Lord-brain-inside-a-human-one headache. It's more a sucked-exposed-through-the-Vortex headache.

That's it. One moment in the lab and the next she was thin as string and a million disconnected atoms, avoiding by mere chance the snapping jaws of nothing, and flying through fire -- so much fire -- two planets decollapsing backwards and the friction of it, for a moment the whole of time and space in her head and she saw, _saw_ her part in the pattern before Time snatched it back and she tumbled through the inexpert break-in and was spat out here on this shiny floor.

"Ow," Donna Noble announces decidedly, and hunches up, trying not to be sick.

She sits there not very long -- long enough to stop feeling in danger of illness, settling into the easing stages of dizziness and hurt -- and just as she's made up her mind to try standing up and exploring, a panel slides aside from the wall a few feet down from where she's sitting and someone steps through, the panel closing again behind him. A man in a frock coat, complete with cravat, and Donna thinks for a moment he looks a bit familiar. He spots her at once and comes over, crouching down next to her. "Are you all right?"

"Dunno," Donna says, and takes a deep breath. "I think so. Give me a moment." She looks up at him and immediately scoots backwards a little; he apparently has _no_ concept of personal space. "Er. Building's all wrong, but I don't suppose it's around 1900?"

"Certainly not," he says. Light voice, also oddly familiar; blue eyes, polite and concerned. And he looks so tired. "5842, as a matter of fact." He considers. "Here, anyway. I'm sure it's 1900 somewhere. 5842.4 RE where you're sitting."

"RE," Donna repeats, with a sense of foreboding. She tries to stand. It doesn't work too well on a first go, and this strange bloke helps her up with such thoughtless concern that she can't bring herself to be annoyed. She half-stumbles down the corridor until she reaches the nearest window; hands gripping the sill, forehead pressed to what's almost certainly not glass. "Oh no," she breathes.

The sky is a brilliant deep orange, light refracted slightly out of real by the dome overhead. Stretching down in front of her lie the spires and streets of the Capitol, quiet and unmoving. Further out she can see the vivid red plains; the trees are bare, for the time of year, she supposes, and the distant glittering river frozen. At the edge of sight the mountains rise up, covered in snow. It's a hundred times more beautiful than she could have imagined with only a borrowed memory to compare.

Donna becomes aware that one hand is pressed over her mouth. She lowers it slowly. "You mean Rassilon Era. 5842.4, Rassilon Era."

"That's right," this -- Time Lord, maybe he's a Time Lord, Donna thinks through the buzz of panic in her head -- says, coming up to stand next to her. "Forgive me -- if you're all right, can you tell me how you came to be here?"

"Emergency temporal shift," Donna says, remembering Caan's words. His mad giggling. She shudders. "I -- I'm from another timeline, I shouldn't even ... be here ..." She trails off, struck by a sudden thought. Being pulled into the TARDIS -- meeting the Doctor again -- stopping the Daleks again through the creation of another Doctor -- so she _had_ to meet him, had to have his brain, had to be sent home again to fetch the Master, had to remember again -- had to go after the Master in order to find his machine in order to end up _here_. All those bits of time, all those coincidences pulling her into this impossible place. Donna Noble the human Time Lord, in the middle of a time-locked war.

"Yes?" her companion prompts after a moment.

Donna takes a deep breath. 5842 -- fourteenth year of the War, by Time Lord reckoning. Well. For a while the War had always been, its effects rippling outwards so that even Gallifrey felt the echoes. Davros was thirteen years gone but the Daleks were rallying, hitting other targets in the Seven Systems. They weren't clever enough -- yet -- to find a way around the transduction barrier sheltering Gallifrey from attack. After Arcadia, they would. Just now, she -- no, the _Doctor_ \-- he was fighting the War in his own way, going where he could throughout time and space and stopping the Daleks -- trying to stop them -- before they took over planets, knocked entire timelines off course, dragged the universe that much closer to entropy. He was in the Citadel so much more then than he'd been since his second century; reporting to Romana, thank Rassilon, because in wartime all noninterference was out the window and the Council, by some miracle, agreed with her. But all this no longer _was_, is no longer clinical facts in Donna's head. Suddenly it is _again happening now_, and if noninterference is out the window -- if she's _supposed_ to be here -- if --

"Take me to President Romana," she says.

"I'm still not quite sure I follow," the man admits. "Emergency -- You were catapulted through time and ended up _here_. That's astronomically unlikely." Then, abrupt about-face from pensive to decisive: "It's so unlikely it _must_ be terribly important. Come on!"

"That's more like it," Donna mutters, although really it's a quicker response than she was expecting, at least to go by the Doctor's many, varied, and mostly negative opinions on the subject of Time Lords and relative efficiency. She follows her guide's velvet-clad back down the corridor -- through into a high vaulted room -- out and ducking through a narrow space lined with all sorts of electronics and blinking lights -- into another, interior corridor. The map in Donna's head offers up the hypothesis that they're heading in exactly the opposite direction to the Council chambers. Good: a private audience is probably best. Donna's entirely sure that a human Time Lord is not about to get a warm reception from most of her acquired cousins.

She's a bit nervous about meeting Romana, all the same. The Doctor files in her head offer up a multitude of opinions on the subject: admiration, fondness, regret. It's almost exactly like hearing all about a best mate's wonderful romance and spectacular breakup with some bloke, and then finding out you're supposed to go out to a business dinner with this bloke and pretend you don't know a thing. Only, Donna reflects, this time the business dinner is _about_ the best mate. Right. All she needs to do is remember that Romanadvoratrelundar is Lord President of Gallifrey in wartime. That's more than enough.

Donna catches up with her guide as they pass through a wide room full of miniature silver-leafed trees in off-season bloom, a fountain burbling pleasantly at the centre. "By the way, how'd you know I was here?"

"Hm? Oh, sensors picked up a breach," he replies. "Human -- that's you, obviously -- but recognised. I was sent over because they thought you might be one of mine."

"One of yours," Donna repeats, with horrible creeping suspicion. The frock coat really does look _very_ familiar ...

"Hm? Yes, I occasionally --" He breaks off, stopping in front of a door; a real door, this time, two-paneled and clearly delineated from the wall. "Here we are!" No one's standing guard. He knocks.

After a moment the one of the doors swing open, held by the Lord President. Donna recognises her at once: the most recent of the bodies the Doctor knew her in, but the least well-known; straight brown hair, sharp blue eyes and sharper cheekbones, a determined tilt to her chin. She's wearing not the robes of office but a twenty-first-century Earth skirt and blouse -- but then, Donna supposes, she's practical. Romana sizes her up and says, "You'd better both come in."

The room inside is fitted with a small conference table; the five walls sans doors are top-to-bottom plasma screens showing the schematics of various star systems. Donna walks over to one, looks at the clusters of dots. "Red for Time Lords, blue for Daleks," she murmurs.

Romana looks over at her sharply. "That's right." She closes the door. "Perhaps you'd like to sit down." When both her guests have done so, she turns to Donna's companion and says, "Now what's this all about, Doctor?"

The shock -- if there is a shock -- is a dull one; Donna's already half-guessed. The problem with all the Doctor's memories is that they come from the inside. At best she has a good idea what each of his bodies was inclined to wear -- a habit she might have found bewildering except that the catalogue of clothing comes with the understanding that it's the way he anchors himself to each new form -- and at worst, well ... the frock coat had looked _familiar_, anyway, but most of the memories offered up for the man he was during the Time War are either extremely vague or clinically sharp.

If Donna was ever here before, he certainly doesn't remember it.

She thinks all this listening with one ear as the Doctor leans forward and earnestly explains the circumstances in which he found Donna. Donna already knows what he's saying, and instead she watches him in fascination, this man who is the Doctor, without being the Doctor she met, while still absolutely being _her_ Doctor, because she _knows_ him. She watches the shapes his hands make in the air as he talks, quite as expressive with them here as he is in that later form; watches the way he does some strange impression of Schrödinger's cat as he sits there, absolutely in the moment, not there at all. Eight hundred years old (give or take) and still so young. Donna discovers she feels almost crushingly sorry for him.

Realising his attention and Romana's have both shifted to her, Donna snaps back into the present moment. "Right," she says, the Doctor's last comment catching up with her, "where I'm from, all this -- the War, everything -- it's all over, and time-locked."

Romana frowns. "What year are you from, by human reckoning?"

"Just left 2009," Donna says, already guessing where Romana's going with this.

"Humans aren't counted among the higher beings until the Great Exodus of 55,000," Romana says. "With very few exceptions --" she glances at the Doctor "-- humans are quite unaware of Time Lords, nor of this Time War."

"I know," Donna says. She glances at the Doctor again. "Look, could I -- I'm sorry, Doctor, really -- could I do this without him here? It's time-sensitive."

As soon as she says it she wants to swallow it back in: she'd only meant to be as accurate as possible, but her last phrase came out in Gallifreyan, _time-sensitive_ not in the sense of needing to be done soon, but in a very particular way meaning _volatile to timelines; handle with care_. The Doctor and Romana are both looking at her with surprise, and she knows she's made an impression. That's hardly good; where before she guessed the Doctor merely failed to remember her, in among all the madness of the Time War, he can hardly do so now he's heard a human speak High Gallifreyan.

Still, the Doctor nods and stands, excusing himself politely, and slips out the door.

Romana fixes Donna with a steady look. "You'd better start at the beginning," she says, with a particular inflection: _your_ beginning, not _his_.

Donna takes a deep breath and explains. She starts at the beginning, too, with her wedding; not all the details, just the Huon particles, and her meeting the Doctor, his future, her past. She talks about meeting him again. She talks about coincidences, and about the biological metacrisis. She doesn't mention Davros, or the Daleks. She starts to explain how she had her memory erased and went home, but hesitates.

"It's likely you've already broken a few causality laws telling me all this, let alone coming here," Romana says, a touch dryly; "What is it you don't want to tell me?"

"I don't have the timeline for this," Donna admits. "What's happened to the Master?"

Romana gives her a frankly surprised look. "I assume his bio-data is safely stored away in the Matrix, where it belongs."

Donna nods. "Well. Anyway the coincidences haven't stopped -- like something needed me to come here. The time I'm from, I said, the War's time-locked. But it's been broken through, not by me, and far as I can tell it's mostly _jammed_ now." She spreads her hands. "I don't know if that means the outcome can change now, or if it just means I'm supposed to be part of events, but either way I think I'm supposed to be here." She twists her hands back together and stares down at them for a moment before she forces herself to look up at Romana again. "And either way I want to change it. No one wins. It's awful."

Romana doesn't suggest Donna might be lying. She merely nods and walks from Donna to one of the plasma screens, gazing in thought at one dot cluster and another. "The Doctor tries to stop this War in his own way," she says, seemingly to a schematic of the Lagoon Nebula. "It's certainly not a popular way. Sometimes I think it might work if more Time Lords were willing to try it -- but we tried to stop the Daleks once by taking care of the trouble before it began, and _that_ certainly didn't work." She sighs and turns back to Donna. "The suggestion that with time even water can wear down stone is nothing but a lot of poetic nonsense to the Council. They'd like a real war with proper battles and tin soldiers, or they'd like nothing at all. And I know the Doctor can't stop this alone." A sudden smile lights her face, making her almost painfully pretty. "But _you_ \-- you're another Doctor."

"More or less," Donna says, with a sideways smile. "Donna Noble, by the way."

Romana laughs, a sudden strangely honest sound, and comes over to give Donna's hand a firm shake. "I'm extremely glad to meet you, Donna."

"It's a nice thought, anyway," Donna says, "but even if I've got the Doctor's brain I'm still human. I mean. I can die in space. I've only got the one heart. I haven't even got a sonic screwdriver. It's one thing being out there in space when you've got a proper Time Lord Doctor looking after you. I'm not quite the same."

"What if we evened the odds?" Romana asks, a speculative look in her eye.

"Well, if it comes to that, I could probably _make_ a sonic screwdriver," Donna says. "Even the odds?"

Romana smiles. "Give you a TARDIS."

For a moment Donna just stares at her.

She feels her heart expanding with longing and hope and terror. All the bits of her that are the Doctor are crying out, _Oh, please, yes, let me have her back_; if she's honest, all the bits of her that are Donna wanted to travel with the Doctor forever, too. She first realised how much she regretted not going with the Doctor when she had the chance because she could remember, in such wonderful vivid detail, all the beauty and wonder and light of the forming Earth. The Doctor's wonderful -- even having his mind in her head hasn't done a lot to change that opinion -- but the vastness of the universe is really the thing that makes Donna want to keep traveling forever. Her own TARDIS.

"Oh yes please," she says, a bit more breathlessly than she intends to.

"You might only be able to use the physical interface," Romana says.

"Don't care!" Donna says. "Don't think so -- I mean, I haven't tried anything really telepathic yet, but I think I can -- but even if I can't, I don't care."

"You're quite like him," Romana says, a mild observation with an edge of amusement. "I think you'll get by."

"Can I -- pick one?" Donna ventures. "I know where the TARDIS bay is -- three levels down, it's no trouble." She drags in a breath. "And if there's a particular place you want me to go ...?"

"Not at the moment," Romana says; "Take any TARDIS that catches your fancy. It'll be logged as out, and I'll be able to contact you if I need to."

Donna feels a funny flare of resentment (_at the beck and call of the Council_ in a mutter at the back of her head) but she ignores that as a bit of the Doctor's nonsense. "Thank you," she says with perfect sincerity. "Thanks, really."

"Of course." Romana goes to the door. "Good luck." She smiles again, that painfully pretty smile. "DoctorDonna."

Donna laughs a bit and goes out.

To her momentary surprise -- _but of course_ \-- just down the corridor she discovers the Doctor lurking by a potted plant. He tries to look as though he just happened to be there, but Donna rolls her eyes and goes over to him. "How much of that did you hear, spaceboy?"

He affects a look of great innocence. "Romana's private council? Not a word."

She sighs. "Well, you can at least help me pick out a TARDIS." She offers an arm. After a moment's hesitation, the Doctor takes it and they walk down together to the TARDIS bay.

Knowing and remembering, again, are not the same as _seeing_ it. The TARDIS bay takes up an entire level, TARDISes spreading out for a half-mile in every direction. They're all on default settings here: economically small on the outside, smooth coral shells. Donna has no idea how to choose one, and knows better than to ask the man walking next to her; the Doctor chose one by racing into it and deadlocking the doors and throwing the brake. She's a little tempted to do the same, just to see if it works. Instead she wanders among the beautiful bits of coral, roughly the size of the Doctor's police box though far more elegantly shaped. She follows the small tickle growing in her mind, until it becomes impossible to ignore.

Donna finds herself standing in front of a TARDIS that looks much like all the others. This one's a pleasing yellowish pink. "Type?" she asks.

"It's an old one," the Doctor says, with audible amusement. "Type 85."

"Yeah, well, not as old as yours," Donna says, disentangling her arm from the Doctor's and walking up to rest a hand against the TARDIS' side. It shivers to life under her touch, old and curious, and Donna shivers too. A bit of the front slides away, just as the doors in the Citadel did, and Donna steps inside cautiously. The Doctor follows with rather more deference than she's used to.

This TARDIS is on default settings inside, too: smooth white floor, roundels in the walls that look a bit too much like Lego pieces for Donna's taste. She goes to the console, runs her hands carefully over it. The TARDIS hums, pleased.

"I think it likes you," the Doctor observes from the doorway. "A finicky old one like this, too."

"Yeah," Donna says. "Don't knock finicky." She moves to the monitor and starts scrolling through settings; it needs to look a bit different than _this_. First it does variations on the default theme -- different colour time rotors, that sort of thing. Different coloured rooms. It has one done up entirely in wood, which is silly, and one in _leopard print_, which makes Donna switch over very quickly. The one with all the ponderous stone and gurneys causes the Doctor to make an appreciative noise, but he has a bit of weird taste, this one. Finally Donna decides on a setting with curved cream-coloured walls, roundel-free, soft lighting, a carpeted floor with runner down to the door, and a central console near default settings, which at least makes the whole thing look a good deal less phallic. She grins and stands back and feels how pleased the TARDIS is at this choice, little neurons of approval sparking in her brain.

"So?" she says to the Doctor. "What do you think?"

"It's very nice," he says. He seems to mean it, too, which is a bit of a first.

"Anyway," she says. "I'd better be going. Come here." The Doctor hesitates for a moment. "Now."

He goes to her slowly, offers, "If you're here to change events, there's no harm --"

"And I can't be here to change them unless they already go the way they --" Donna hesitates, ends the sentence with the Gallifreyan word that means both _have done_ and _will do_; _is happening_ from two views. "You can't remember me." When he opens his mouth, probably to protest, she says, "You can't _recognise_ me."

"But I quite like you," he says earnestly. "I could just -- make myself not remember until a specified time. That would do the trick."

"No," Donna says gently, stepping up to him and raising her hands to press her fingers to his temples. She has to blink a couple of times so that her vision won't traitorously blur. "I can't explain it, but this is justice, Doctor."

Carefully, in the way he knows best, she plucks herself from his mind. Not a suppression; not something dangerous. He just doesn't know who she is. She removes her hands and gives him a smile; he smiles back in faint puzzlement and wanders out.

Donna sighs and makes sure the door's locked behind him, then -- heart pounding a little too hard with nervousness -- walks around the console of her very own TARDIS, listening to the wheeze of its engines, and flies it out to the stars.

She goes first, briefly, to the sky above Meta Sigma Folia, and stands in the open door of her TARDIS, holding onto the lintel and watching bursts of starfire, white and gold and blue and green fireworks an hundred thousand miles across. After a bit they go blurry too; Donna swipes a hand across her face, and goes back to the console, and is about to pilot a course from anywhere to anywhere when a surge of energy makes itself known under her hands. She goes to the monitor to see what it is.

Instead she finds the Doctor's face peering at her; _her_ Doctor, the one she just left, skinny and freckled and with that stupid, stupid hair. Donna grins. "Doctor?"

"Donna!" he says with delight. "Where are you? Are you all right?"

As if she hasn't had enough questions already today she can't answer. She takes a moment to think this out, and sets about not answering.

It's a good start.


	7. 5x07: The Rift

## (Cardiff, Earth, 2009)

"Okay, people. What the hell is this thing?"

It's a good question. Jack and Mickey together managed to dig it out of a field just outside Cardiff. Now it sits on the conference table, an unassuming pale box in some unidentifiable metal, radiating an air of ominousness.

"Storage device?" Ianto suggests with the air of a man wanting to get the obvious out of the way.

"Have you tried touching it?" Gwen ventures.

"Dug it up with gloves on," Mickey says, waving a dirt-encrusted pair in proof. "Anyway, 's probably best not to. I've met all sorts of nasties that open up if you touch 'em with bare skin."

"Only question is, how are we going to find out otherwise?" Martha puts in. "I mean, we can put it down in a cell and -- I dunno, just Jack can have a go figuring out how to open it."

"If we can clear the cell space," Tom mutters; Martha gives him a Look and he smiles a little, apologetically. "It's great in theory, but we're overflowing with Weevils."

"We have control areas downstairs," Jack decides. "Okay; Ianto, Martha, with me. You're my backup if something nasty comes out. Gwen, Mickey, Tom, you guys get to work cataloguing the rest of this week's Rift debris."

"I see what you're doing," Mickey says. "You're trying to break me up from the guns."

"Yeah, yeah," Jack says, giving him a shove. "Go."

They go, Ianto taking Mickey's gloves and hauling up one side of the box while Jack takes the other. Martha follows them down into the vault, past the cells and to a back room where the door has iron bars. Martha grabs two stun guns -- she's never shot to kill in her life and she certainly isn't planning to start now -- and, once Ianto's set down his end of the box and come to join her outside the door, she hands him one.

"Ready?" Ianto asks Jack.

Jack grins at them lopsidedly through the bars. "If nothing happens when I touch this thing, I'm going to feel really stupid," he says. Goes to the box, and touches it with careful fingers. Martha, watching closely, sees the pressed impression left by his fingertips glow gold for a moment before fading. With a little sighing sound, the box slides open.

"Well?" Ianto calls after a moment.

"I don't know," Jack says, "but I don't think there's anything alive in there." He leans over it. "It looks like a weapons chest. I think you guys can come in."

Martha slides back the bolt cautiously; she and Ianto go into the room. "Alien weapons?" Ianto asks.

"Oh yeah." Jack carefully pulls out a number of elegant little objects with a passing resemblance to grenades. "Don't touch _anything_."

Martha laughs a little with nerves. "No fear of that." Watches Jack unpack, with great delicacy, a few more grenade things and pull out -- with Ianto's help -- what looks like nothing so much as an air raid bomb. "Er," Martha adds, "there's no way that fit in that little box."

"I'm not about to go feeling around inside," Jack says, meeting her eyes, "but I'm guessing it's bigger in there than it looks."

"Do you recognise any of it?" Ianto asks, looking at the bomb thing from one angle and then another, warily. "I mean, you've been around a bit. Of weaponry. In your time."

Jack grins briefly, but says, "I've never seen this kind of thing before. Except --" He darts another look at Martha, sighs, and adds, "We're putting all this away. _Carefully_. Martha --"

"Bigger on the inside," Martha says. "Want me to phone him?"

"Best idea I've heard all day," Jack says. "Do it."

Martha nods, goes out into the corridor, and calls the Doctor.

The phone rings for so long that she starts worrying she's calling while he's in the middle of being chased by something large, dangerous, and probably very angry. Then the call's picked up and a voice purrs in her ear, "He keeps a _mobile_? That's so sweet," and Martha nearly drops the phone from sheer shocked terror.

"What --" she manages after a moment, "What the _hell_ are you doing with the Doctor's phone?"

"Martha Jones?" the Master's voice inquires, incredulous and with the edge of a laugh. "Oops."

_I saw you die,_ Martha thinks. She doesn't say it. After all, she doesn't know exactly how Time Lord regeneration is supposed to work, or what the Master might have done this time. Instead she says, as steadily as she can, "Where's the Doctor?"

"Oh, he's --" the Master starts, and swears. The line goes dead. Martha stares at her phone in horror. "Jack," she says dully.

Jack sticks his head around the door. "Yeah?" he says, and, seeing the look on her face, comes the rest of the way into the corridor. "What is it?"

"I --" Martha starts, and in her hand her mobile rings. She stares at it for a long moment, then raises it slowly to her face and answers. "Yes?"

"Martha!" It's the Doctor's voice this time, and Martha's legs nearly collapse with relief. She leans back against the damp wall and breathes out. "Sorry about that," the Doctor goes on. "I just. Well."

"Just _what_?" Martha says. "Just somehow magically have the Master acting your secretary?" Jack gives a start and she waves a hand at him; _shh_.

"That's not my fault, really," the Doctor says. "I mean. He came back, and I couldn't -- yeah, he's on the TARDIS, but I didn't think he was going to answer the phone. It's better he's here than somewhere else anyway." This last nearly has a note of pleading, although Martha could well be imagining it.

"That's true." Martha sighs. Her heart's still racing, and she feels less than comforted. "What about Donna?"

"Oh, er, we sort of ... lost her." The Doctor has the grace to sound guilty about this. "She's fine! She's fine, she just wouldn't tell me where she is."

Martha's eyebrows go up. "_Really_."

"Martha," the Doctor says quickly, "what were you calling about?"

"Something funny fell through the Rift," Martha says, "but listen, you're not bringing the Master anywhere _near_ Torchwood." She takes a deep breath to calm her anger and asks, in an admirably calm tone, "How's he there anyway, Doctor? I thought he didn't regenerate."

"Yeah, it's -- complicated." Martha can nearly hear the Doctor awkwardly rubbing the back of his neck. "Look, I'll keep him locked up. He won't be able to do anything, I promise. I'd like to see you. Really. Funny things falling through the Rift. I'll be there in a moment."

"But --" Martha says, but he's already hung up.

"The Master," Jack says flatly.

"Apparently it's complicated." Martha pockets her phone, scowling. "He's not dead, Jack. He _answered the phone_."

Jack swears. "He's with the Doctor."

"Yeah." Martha pushes away from the wall, overwhelmed with the urge to pace. "And not locked up, cos hey! he's answering the Doctor's phone!" She turns to Jack. "Also somehow they lost Donna. Apparently she's fine but the Doctor doesn't know where she is. Doesn't sound a _bit_ suspicious, does it!"

Jack winces a little. "Martha ..."

"If you're about to say the Doctor knows what he's doing, don't," Martha says quietly. "He -- Jack, when the Master died --"

"I know," Jack says.

"Done the last of those grenades," Ianto says, stepping out into the corridor. "What's happening, then?"

Jack opens his mouth to answer but is interrupted by the sound of the TARDIS fading in up in the Hub proper. As one, he and Martha dash for the stairs. The TARDIS is fully materialised by the time they reach it, and the others, drawn by the noise, are clustered around that familiar blue box. The Doctor hops out.

"Mickey!" he says. "Working at Torchwood, then?"

"That's right, boss," Mickey says, and grins when the Doctor claps him on the shoulder and moves on.

"Gwen Cooper!" The Doctor beams at her. "Nice to meet you properly in person. And you -- don't tell me -- Tom Milligan! You're Martha's ... fiancé, isn't it? Brilliant." He finishes shaking the hand of the slightly bewildered but smiling Tom, and turns. "Ianto Jones! Good to meet you at last."

"You too, sir." Ianto comes forward and shakes the Doctor's hand.

There's a slight uncomfortable pause.

"Hello, you two," the Doctor says. "So where's this thing that fell through the Rift?"

"Doctor --" Jack says.

"He's fine," the Doctor cuts him off. "Locked up. He's not getting out. I swear."

"Yeah, but you can't --"

"Show me," the Doctor says, in that awful quiet voice Martha's only heard him use a handful of times. It even shuts Jack up. He nods, says, "This way -- Mickey, Gwen -- all of you -- don't let anything else leave the TARDIS," and leads the way for the Doctor down into the vault, Martha following. This time Ianto stays behind, probably to tactfully avoid the tension.

"About Donna," Martha ventures after a moment. "What do you mean you don't know where she is?"

The look the Doctor darts in her direction is for a moment fierce and closed; then he seems to hear the question and his expression relaxes a little. "She asked me not to come for her," he says, and tells them the story, Donna finding the Master, both of them tracking the Master down together. Listening to the chronology of this narrative, Martha notes with some surprise that the Master was already back -- and completely loose -- when Donna came to the Hub. She'd certainly neglected to mention it. Martha wonders what compelled Donna's silence, what insight into the Doctor's mind would have made her keep it to herself. She finds she's suddenly very glad she's not in Donna's place.

"In here," Jack says, interrupting this train of thought. He shows the Doctor into the vault room, pointing at the chest. "It's full of grenades and bombs and things. Lots of them. I didn't poke around too much; didn't want to set anything off."

At once the Doctor frowns, pulls his specs from his pocket, and hurries over to peer at the box. "Dimensionally transcendent?" he asks Jack, and without waiting for an answer, has pulled out his sonic screwdriver too and is scanning the box. His eyes go wide. "Not just that," he murmurs; "this is Time Lord technology." He sticks a hand inside and pulls out one of the grenade things. "Martha!" Kneels briefly and tosses a large rock into Martha's surprised hands. "Throw that at the far wall, will you?"

"Now?"

"Yes, now," he says, and to Martha's alarm he twists the pin from the grenade. But the Doctor's still looking at her expectantly, so she throws the rock with all her strength at the indicated wall. As she does so, the Doctor casually lobs the grenade after it; a soundless explosion, the grenade's vanished and the rock is caught frozen in mid-arc.

"What --" Jack starts towards it.

"Don't get too close," the Doctor says quietly. "Time-freeze. Got a radius of about a yard." He sighs and pockets his specs. "It'll wear off after a day or so."

"So, what, we're talking Time Lord weapons?" Jack ventures.

"Yeah." The Doctor stares in contemplation at the rock hanging suspended in the air. "Which shouldn't _happen_, of course. The rift here accesses time and space at completely random points, yes, but it shouldn't be possible to access a point in a locked ... timeline ..."

"Doctor?" Martha prompts after a moment.

"Caan and Davros got through," the Doctor says, turning to Jack and Martha. "Yes? Reentry was catastrophic to Caan's mind, but once he'd punched that first hole into that timestream, Davros was able to get out without going mad. Well. Madder. So now -- if you know where to look --" His throat bobs, a distant look in his eyes for a moment before he flashes back to them. "Anyway! It means other things might start falling through. Just -- weapons and things. Lock that away. You're under no circumstances to use it. _Ever_. Anything else like that turns up, lock it away too, or call me if you're not sure. Understood?"

Jack and Martha both nod, and he relaxes a bit. "Right," he says. "Good. Okay. That means I'm off to close the Medusa Cascade rift. Didn't think I needed to do it again -- sloppy. But now stuff might be falling through ..."

"But not the Cardiff rift?" Jack asks, a touch dryly.

"We-ell," the Doctor says, stretching the word and looking quite awkward about the whole affair, "technically this rift is an historic curiosity and if I closed it I'd be violating not only a number of natural laws but quite a few interstellar ones also."

Martha can't hold back the laugh at that. "Seriously."

"Oh, yeah, quite serious." The Doctor sighs and runs a hand through his hair. It stands crazily on end. "The Medusa Cascade, on the other hand ..."

"So that's it," Jack says. "Just a bit of business."

"That's right," the Doctor agrees, not quite looking at him.

"What are you going to do?" Martha ventures after a moment. "I mean, are you going to keep him locked up _forever_, or --?"

"I don't know," the Doctor admits. Sees Jack opening his mouth and adds, "I know I can't trust him. I know he probably can't be changed. But he's not safe on his own and I can't -- can't --"

His throat works for a moment and Martha cuts in, firmly, "We understand." Glances at Jack and gives him a look; _don't we, Jack_. Jack grimaces but mutters agreement. "Anyway," Martha says. "We'll give you a ring if we find anything. And _don't_ let him near your phone again."

"I won't," the Doctor assures her.

Up the stairs and a round of goodbyes later, Torchwood's seen the Doctor off and Jack retreats to his office. Ianto starts to follow him, hesitates, and glances at Martha, who gives Ianto a grateful look and follows Jack instead. "What do you think?" she asks, closing Jack's office door behind her.

"Honestly? Can't say. I mean, the Doctor's usually a pretty smart guy." Jack laughs a little, ruefully. "Obviously."

Martha's silent for a long moment. "Jack," she says.

He looks up at her. "Yeah?"

"If we spend enough time telling ourselves we're all right," Martha says, making sure she stays looking at Jack as she asks it, "that living so long, or surviving that year, or fighting the Daleks the way we did -- that it's fine, does it eventually become true?"

Jack considers this for a moment; then he grins, brilliant and painful. "Yes it does, Martha Jones. Of course it does."

 

## (The Medusa Cascade, 2008)

It's barely fifteen minutes after the Master was locked away for his little time-out that he hears the door opening again. He doesn't look up right away, the Doctor's entrance being far less important than the nice letter he's reading on the subject of fictional wizard domination over the Muggles for their own good. Reaching the end of the paragraph, he glances up at the Doctor, who's moved a little ways into the room and is leaning against a bookshelf. "Back so soon? And after I'd found this nice novel all bookmarked and everything." He tosses it aside and watches the Doctor wince, nearly imperceptibly. "I _do_ hope you apologised on my behalf for startling poor Martha so."

"It didn't come up," the Doctor says tightly. "A crate full of time missiles and freeze grenades fell through the Rift."

The Master springs to his feet, hearts pounding with excitement in the impeccable rhythm of the drums, books and associated mocking forgotten. "_How_?"

"A short while back a Dalek punched its way back into the Time War," the Doctor says, and before the Master can raise his eyebrows and say _Back?_ the Doctor presses on, "And relatedly the rift at the Medusa Cascade's reopened. I thought I might go close it again."

The Master laughs. "How appropriate."

They'd gone to the Medusa Cascade together once, long ago. When the Master was a serious, studious boy he can sometimes only remember now in the most vague of terms; when the boy who would become the Doctor had leaned out for a better look over the vastness of space, heedless of the vertigo, and commented offhandedly that it was a wonder the rift there wasn't sucking in or spitting out all sorts of unfortunate things.

He'd sealed it later, all on his own. Everyone on Gallifrey knew about it -- even the Master, long gone from the Citadel by then, had heard the stories, heard how very impressed everyone was with their convenient renegade. But he still doesn't know _how_ the Doctor managed it. "So that story is true," he says. "It wasn't some rumour started by Borusa in a fit of pride."

"Course it's true," the Doctor says, frowning to himself. Not even paying _attention_ to the Master.

"So?" the Master prompts after a moment. "How did you do it? I hope you didn't use this old clunker for anything essential."

That does get the Doctor's attention, although without the usual accompanying indignation on behalf of his ship. "Well," he says. "I was --" Breaks off, turns on his heel, and actually leaves the Master standing there, gaping for a moment with astonishment. Then he recovers himself and follows the Doctor, out into the corridor, up the stairs to the console room.

"How, then?" the Master insists. "Or do you want me to guess? Maybe you've forgotten and you want me to come up with ideas until you hit on the right one."

"I only have to replicate what I already did," the Doctor says. "Fly through it from the warp side -- the anomaly will close itself up and then it's just a matter of charged ions out the top and a _bit_ of a psychic nudge."

The Master stares at him. What the Doctor's proposing is the scientific and psychic equivalent of stopping up a cracked leak in a dam by mixing together cement from sand and chewing gum and then slapping it over with a bit of duct tape. "You're serious," he says, not a question. And of course the worst thing is that it's going to _work_. The Master can spend eighteen months carefully laying all his plans and checking for errors and making sure there are no mistakes, and the Doctor can foil those and probably save another star system into the bargain with the assistance of only a nearly obsolete Type 40 and a few jumped-up apes for cheerleaders. It's disgusting. He sighs. "Go on, then."

"Right." The Doctor brings the Medusa Cascade up on the monitor; across the room the Master pretends not to be interested in the beautiful bloom of it, even in miniature, the yellows and greens and the nearly-invisible blue of the rift. The Doctor glances back at him and smiles, a sudden brilliant smile of excitement that knocks the Master off-centre, says, "Hang on tight," and throws the brake.

The TARDIS soars spinning crazily through space, looping at improbable speeds around the warp side of all those clouds of stardust, and _pulling_. The Master gasps and hangs on hard to the rail and hears the Doctor laughing with exhilaration, a mad honest sound. Roundabout behind them he can feel the rift starting to knit together drawn in by the TARDIS -- improbable, insane, but _working_ \-- as the Doctor races around the console, pressing buttons in complicated sequence and venting a storm of ions out through the top of the ship; the Master can feel the crash of it, the complete bewilderment of this small patch of universe suddenly confronted with the Doctor's particular methods of doctoring. He braces himself, but the Doctor's burst of psychic energy following has all the nudging subtlety of -- well, of a neutron star, which is probably quite appropriate considering the scale and type of problem the Doctor's dealing with. The Master doesn't have to appreciate it, though. More accurately he's quite unable to, caught for a moment in the psychic wash and knocked to his knees. There's nothing specific in the flare, just a lot of _Doctorishness_, which is quite enough to make him feel he needs a long bath just to scrub off the phantom hair gel.

He pulls himself carefully to his feet with the TARDIS spinning placidly through space, a spectacularly pretty and at least mostly harmless collection of stardust floating behind them, rift-free. Taking stock, he finds the Doctor sitting slumped below the console, face very pale and teeth grit. Without thinking, the Master goes over to him.

"Typical," he says, crouching down next to the Doctor. "Get up. You just used too much energy."

Seemingly taking this as an offer to _help_ him get up, the Doctor reaches out and crushingly grasps the Master's hand. The Master's completely unprepared for it.

This time the onslaught from the Doctor's exhausted -- and so, also, unshielded -- mind is absolutely overwhelming: fear, grief, a beach, diamonds, echoes, flames, a terrible deep loneliness, all piled on each other and overlaid with a horrible bewildering _gratefulness_ that the Master's here. The Master hisses sharply in surprised pain, and somehow an attempt to pull away becomes gripping harder on the Doctor's hand. The Doctor's eyes meet his, wide and dark with shock, and slowly, slowly, taking care not to jostle each other's thoughts, they put the walls back up. The Master helps the Doctor to his feet.

"Thanks," the Doctor says.

"No more rift," says the Master.

"Yeah." The Doctor turns and fiddles aimlessly with a few dials on the console.

"I'll just get back to my book," the Master decides, shoving his hands in his pockets.

"Good," the Doctor says.

"Good," the Master echoes.

He flees.

His hands are shaking a little as he goes to retrieve his book. If they never talk of this again, it'll be too soon.


	8. 5x08: Fjemir

## (Medusa Cascade, 2008)

For about a week, relative time, the Doctor lets the TARDIS just float near the Medusa Cascade; even if there is nothing else to recommend it, it still has the spectacular view. He tells himself he's just making sure the rift doesn't open again. He makes a number of small repairs, fixing coils, messing with the settings of the TARDIS interior for a bit before deciding he's still quite fond of the honest organic look. He makes a list of all the other spacetime rifts he can think of; which ones are supervised, which ones are dangerous, which ones should under no account be left open for fear of debris from the Time War getting through. There are only three rifts that look in particular need of closing, but the Doctor considers a repeat performance of the Medusa Cascade affair and actually has to clamp down on panic. _Stupid_ of him to let down his defenses like that in front of the Master. A human wouldn't even have been able to tell.

The really awful thing, of course, is that now when the Doctor's not paying attention -- making a list of the rifts on a spare bit of notebook paper, for instance -- he finds himself absentmindedly tapping out a neat little rhythm with his pencil nub. That should teach him to let the Master into his head for even a moment. He doesn't _hear_ the drums, exactly, but their echo has imprinted into his neural pattern, and he hasn't yet made the effort to remove it.

The Master keeps himself scarce for most of that week, too; they run into each other once, both stopping by a kitchen at the same time. The Master is hunched over a plate of toast and very black coffee; the Doctor hastily puts together a sandwich and leaves before the silence reaches breaking point. He never once forgets the Master's there, though, even when they're on opposite ends of the TARDIS (as close as the TARDIS ever gets to having ends). Just once, the Doctor takes a bit of a nap, and awakens in total disorientation, thinking he must be on the Valiant -- reaches for the threads of the Archangel network and comes up with a mental handful of Time Lord technology instead -- so he must be waking from strange dreams safe in his bed at the Academy, except -- he recognises his TARDIS, feels lifetimes' worth of memories rush back in at him, remembers: this confusion is the natural result of having the Master here in this space with him, after so long alone.

Eventually he runs out of things to fix and tinker with, runs out of ways to go nowhere fast. With reluctant feet he heads out of the console room to find the Master, who, unsurprisingly, is holed up in the library. He's devolved from the seventh Harry Potter book to X-Men comics, the Doctor sees with raised eyebrows. He didn't know he even _had_ X-Men comics. He entertains himself for a moment trying to guess who they rightfully belong to (his top three contenders are Mel, Mickey, and Susan) before the Master looks up and drawls, "Yes?"

"Cabin fever," the Doctor says. "Want to go out?"

The Master's grin tells him he should have thought more carefully about the phrasing, but all the Master says is, "Where did you have in mind?"

"Hadn't thought about it," the Doctor says, shrugging. It's a poor parody of casual, but at least he's trying. The Master sets aside his comic and follows the Doctor back up to the console room, both of them carefully staying at least a foot distant from each other. The Doctor opens his mouth to say something about closing up more rifts, can't bring himself to say it, and instead presses in the command for random coordinates. The readout is a place he's never heard of before.

He looks up at the Master. Threatening punishment if the Master tries anything will probably sound to the Master like some sort of challenge, but he can't say _nothing_. He thinks about saying, _You don't have your own TARDIS anymore._ He considers, _Since it's only us left ..._ He remembers how he used to wish the Master would just go away, so someone else -- some other Time Lords less weighed down by centuries of complicated history with him -- would take the Master in hand. No, wait, that -- He's very glad he's not saying any of this aloud.

"Don't leave," he says. "Just -- please. Don't."

The Master inspects his nails idly. "Pretty please with a cherry on top?"

"If you like," the Doctor allows.

"This place better have really good ice cream sundaes, then," the Master mutters, but he shrugs and follows the Doctor out.

 

## (Gvemisy, Omicron Five, 80,365,559)

The TARDIS, the Doctor discovers as he steps out, has materialised in some outer street of a city under a great dome, some kind of half-transparent force field. Superficially the layout is a bit like that of the Citadel on Gallifrey, but the sky overhead is a clear brilliant blue, and the place around them looks like nothing so much as the Emerald City as designed and built by industrious madmen with no concept of the law of gravity. Buildings soar out at improbable glowing green angles.

The Master steps out of the TARDIS after the Doctor and squints around. "Should I be expecting singing midgets at any moment?" he asks, then swears and ducks as an energy beam whistles past his head and leaves a tiny scorchmark on the TARDIS paneling. The Doctor puts his hands up at once. "Oh, for crying out -- How do you know that's even recognised as a gesture of surrender here?" the Master hisses, but he puts his hands up too.

It seems to do the trick. After a moment a few four-foot-tall, brilliantly yellow-orange creatures that have a passing resemblance to geckos edge out from behind a building, on their hind legs, using their tails for balance, and holding impressive-looking energy weapons wrapped in their arms. One of them keeps its brilliantly green eyes fixed on the Master while the other turns to the Doctor and says, in a reedy and unexpectedly girlish voice, "Explain your intrusion."

"Just travelers," the Doctor says. "We're just travelers. Happened by."

"How did you come through the Barrier?" it -- she, the Doctor would say at a guess -- asks.

"What, that dome you've got?" The Doctor shrugs, but lightly, avoiding sudden movement. "My ship doesn't travel by ... conventional means. Didn't even notice your Barrier was there. Sorry. Is that a problem?"

The creature hasn't blinked yet. Her head swivels a little so she can look at the Master for a moment too, and her next question is probably addressed to them both. "Do you come from Fjemir?"

"No, don't think so," the Doctor says. "Sorry, what's Fjemir?"

"This one," the other creature says in a different timbre. It has darker spots up its sides. Male? It -- he -- tilts his head at the Master. "This one has not yet spoken."

"We're not from Fjemir," the Master says, sounding bored.

"But they are from outside," the first creature says coldly. "They should be taken to the Consultation."

"Brilliant!" the Doctor says. "Only, sorry, like I said, travelers -- a bit lost. Where are we?"

"Gvemisy," the second creature says, somewhat suspiciously. "We are the Gvemir."

"Gvemisy! Brilliant." The first Gvemir is looking quite impatient, so he adds, "Sorry," and sets off in the direction she's indicated. Without looking he knows the Master is following. They're led up a winding glassy street between the shining emerald buildings. A few clouds scud by overhead and quite without meaning to the Doctor finds himself enjoying it: the bright colours, the beautiful day, the faint humming awareness of another Time Lord in his head. The presence of weapons still pointed in his direction are too routine to fuss him much.

At length they're led inside a building near the centre of the city; muggy inside, creeping green-and-purple plants threading their way up to the shining ceiling. A gently bubbling fountain sits in a pool in the middle of the room, and from all directions the gecko-like Gvemir are pouring in; evidently news travels fast in this city. Most of the Gvemir are unarmed, although a few sport peculiar spiky sequined headdresses. Somewhat to the Doctor's surprise, it's an unadorned Gvemir who comes forward. "Explain this intrusion!" she says, in much the same tones as a displeased schoolteacher.

"Well, I'm the Doctor, and this is --" He glances back at the Master, who merely gives him a cold annoyed glare. "This is Mr Saxon," the Doctor says, which makes the Master's eyes flare with what is at least that same annoyance ratcheted up. "We're just travelers, I've explained -- my ship isn't the sort that's stopped by the kind of barrier you've got up -- but if it's a problem, you know, we could leave, we won't take up your time."

The Gvemir listens to all this in silence, and when it's clear the Doctor's finished she blinks once, a filmy shutter vertically across her eyes, and says, "A prattler and a clown." She turns her attention to the Master. "And what has this one to say?"

Bristling visibly, the Master ignores this entirely. "What's Fjemir?"

Their interrogator -- along with much of the listening crowd -- hisses. "Do not speak its name!"

"That one did," the Master says reasonably, tilting his head in the direction of their captors. "What is it? A place? A person?"

"Fjemir is destiny," another voice pipes up: a male Gvemir, and wearing one of those peculiar headdresses, the Doctor's unsurprised to see. "You would do well to speak cautiously." This Gvemir shuffles forward, peering at them. "If they are of Fjemir, we would do well to speak cautiously too."

The Master looks visibly cheered at this development, but the Doctor says quickly, "We're not of Fjemir. We don't know what it _is_ \-- destiny, whatever that means when it's at home. We're just _travelers_."

"But from beyond the world," the Gvemir in headdress says, and, feeling that a bit of progress is being made, the Doctor nods, saying, "Yeah, that's right, from out there in space."

A murmur ripples through the crowd, and the female Gvemir with the air of authority balances straighter on her tail, gaining height. "Quiet!" she says. "Those not of the Consultation will now leave."

A sizable number of Gvemir trail out, leaving probably around twenty; among them, five are in headdresses. Their escort guard to this place has left too, the Doctor sees, but he's quite sure the remaining Gvemir, unarmed as they are, could hold their own quite well if they wished. They're all eyeing the Doctor and the Master with a great deal of speculation.

"If they come from beyond the world," ventures one of the smaller ones in headdress, "perhaps they are the Evolved."

A male wearing only a pompous air makes a derisive whistling noise. "There's no such thing. Besides, if that were true, they'd know of Fjemir."

"Yeah, yeah, hold up," the Doctor interjects. "I'm still not understanding this. Is Fjemir your word for destiny, or is it ... something real, what ...?"

One of the smaller Gvemir clears her throat, or at least makes an approximation of that sound. "The Cult of Evolution," she says primly, "believe that whomsoever survives the great perils of the World Beyond the Barrier shall grow in strength until at last they meet with Fjemir, who shall reward them greatly and make them one of the Evolved."

The Doctor blinks. "Hang on, evolution as _religion_?"

"It does have a certain appeal," the Master puts in dryly.

"But no one has gone beyond the Barrier in centuries!" blusters the pompous one. He falters.

"The great perils out beyond this Barrier of yours," the Doctor says slowly, "on the rest of this planet -- is that, I dunno, hyperbole, or is it really unsafe out there?"

"Only criminals are exiled beyond the Barrier," the first female Gvemir puts in. "The punishment is terrible. They're never seen or heard from again."

"Oh now, that's interesting," the Doctor murmurs. Likely as not, there's a second civilisation of Gvemir somewhere else on this planet, and he's starting to think he might like them a bit better than this lot. Except -- coldly reptilian as their eyes are, he sees fear in them, real honest fear, even in the headdress-bedecked ones he's beginning to guess are priests of Fjemir or similar. "Do you ... have to enact this punishment often?"

"Only once a generation," the leading female says. "It is a punishment terrible enough that most avoid crime."

"I see," the Doctor says, and darts a look at the Master, who returns it speculatively. It's the Master who says, "And coming into your city here unannounced, that's, oh, probably a punishable offence, isn't it?"

"It is unprecedented," the Gvemir admits. She observes them sharply. "Do you wish to go out and find the Fjemir?"

"That would be the idea, yeah," the Doctor admits.

The Gvemir shuffle a bit, nervously, and flow together into a huddled conference. The Doctor and the Master glance at each other again. "What d'you think?" the Doctor asks quietly.

"Either a legend, in which case we'll get a nice walk and a bit of a laugh," the Master says, "or this Fjemir thing really is out there. Some sort of huge beast, maybe, or a devised series of tests. Either way --" He shrugs.

"So we stop it," the Doctor says.

The Master snorts. "Course. Cos whatever it is, you're going to talk it down or tame it. Seriously, that's limited vision."

Before the Doctor can think of a suitable retort, the Gvemir flow out of conference and one in a headdress announces, "I shall lead you to the Perilous Way."

They follow him out of the chamber and briefly into the sunlight again, glittering with painful brightness off the buildings, before their guide leads them down one alley and another, progressively narrower. The Master, still squinting a bit, remarks, "They do like their dramatics here," and gives the Doctor a look of exaggerated puzzlement when he snorts a little at this observation.

At length they reach a little complicated-looking door set into the deep green of the outer wall. Their guide unlatches the door with a complicated series of gestures with his three gecko-sticky fingers, and scoots backwards swiftly. "Farewell," he says, and, after a moment: "Fjemir grant you Evolution."

"Thanks," the Doctor says, and ducks outside.

The force-field around the city is only vaguely perceptible from out here. A rustling song of insects rises from the violet grass, and the Doctor just stands there, grinning for a moment and breathing the clear air before the Master makes an impatient noise and sets off ahead of him. After a moment the Doctor follows him in long strides. The day is beautiful, if a little muggy; it's a terrible pity the Gvemir are too frightened to come out and enjoy their own planet. Patches of shade dot the rolling hills, and a brisk wind ruffles the Doctor's hair and sets his coat flapping. In the distance a green dot, some structure like the city but smaller, glitters and shines. The Master has already spotted it, and is making in that direction. In a few bounds, the Doctor's caught up with him.

"Slow down for a moment!" the Doctor says. "We're out of the TARDIS! Don't rush through it."

The Master gives him a sideways look. "Maybe I just want a bit of space," he says sharply.

"Oh. Right," the Doctor says, trying not to feel hurt, and falls back to walk at a more leisurely pace. He feels a bit of a fool, really; it's what Martha and Jack have been trying to say -- he might be one of the last two Time Lords in existence but that doesn't make the Master different. He's still the Master; for centuries he's torn up lives and planets, and running from the War was not an act of change, merely an act of preservation. Why he'd thought, for even a second, that after an extended while in his company the Master might change -- when even a year in proximity on the Valiant hadn't done any good -- when --

The Doctor stops in his tracks and looks around. He can't see the Master anywhere. "Oh, for --" he says aloud in frustration, because _really_, a moment's introspection and he just _loses_ the Master, he --

He can't _sense_ him. In his head. Nothing.

Without warning blind panic crashes down on the Doctor, literally collapses his legs under him so he sinks into the grass, gasping and shaking and trying to think, trying to _think_ but without warning he's _alone_ and he _can't_ and it doesn't make _sense_ \--

Doesn't make sense, the small rational voice of the scientist repeats in his mind. Fact: it is likely that the Master has taken advantage of his meandering thoughts to run off. Fact: it is unlikely that he managed to spontaneously cease existing in the last minute. Fact: it is highly unlikely that the Master would be able to shut down either his own neurotransmitters or the Doctor's that would allow them access to a species awareness of each other. Fact: even if the Master can't perform that trick, it's still a neurological possibility. Therefore ...

The Doctor takes a few gulping breaths and closes his eyes. Steps into the field of his mindscape and searches for peculiar brainwave patterns, for suppressions. The adrenaline's all his own, and there's nothing wrong with the visual cortex, but there, just there, in his hindbrain where he'd miss it entirely except that ever since the War the Doctor's been acutely aware of it: the bundle for species awareness, all pressed in. The Doctor yanks all transmitters open without finesse in his haste, and the sudden awareness of the Master's existence slams him back into his physical self hard enough he chokes for a moment on a sob.

The insects are still buzzing, the breeze is still blowing, the landscape still looks gentle and friendly. The Doctor gets shakily to his feet, and now that he can sense the Master again -- an illusion of the brain, not the eyes -- he can see the Master too, only just a little ways ahead of him, staring back at him with something like naked relief on his face, the most open honest expression the Doctor's seen on him in hundreds of years.

So when the Doctor's own awareness was cut off, it severed the Master's too, intentionally or not. The Doctor understands this, if the Master doesn't yet, and he goes over to the Master as quickly as he can, says, "I think I'm going with the series of tests theory. Something just tweaked my neural pattern."

"And mine," the Master snaps, switching from surprise to anger so quickly the Doctor suddenly knows, not guesses, _knows_ the Master was just as afraid as he was.

The Doctor looks at him for a long moment. Thinks: _We could turn back._ The Gvemir seem safe, if discontent, inside their domed city. Losing the Master, even for a moment -- And then the Doctor catches himself, actually setting the Master above all those people if only for a second, and twitches his shoulders, starting to walk again in the direction of the far-off green structure, guilty and unsure. When exactly is the greater good really the greater good, anyway? he wonders. In this case, yes, but in the Time War --

He and the Master freeze as one, spotting them: smudges on the horizon coming swiftly overhead with that unmistakable screaming hum, cruelly ripping the sound barrier. Dalek ships. They both cower down at the first pass, and a distant cold voice in the Doctor's head is saying _It's not real, it's not real_, and it _does_ have the quality of a nightmare, cutting even through the shock. "It's not --" the Doctor says, a little panting gasp under all the terrible noise, and the Master's eyes are huge with fright but he says, "I know -- just keep moving towards that damn --" and they stumble, dragging each other along through the shared hallucination towards the distant structure, only the frantic hammering of the Master's hearts keeping the Doctor from losing his head completely.

Then the Dalek ships start shooting, great blazes of fire down into the grass, the insects screaming, and the Doctor gasps, "_How can this not be real_," but the Master's looking at him with confusion now through the terror. He stares outright as the Doctor flinches, a beam from the Dalek ship exploding into flames just yards from them; smoke fills the air, the world dissolving into sheets of fire and the Doctor can't help it; he crumples down again in the grass-turned-ashes, unable to move, dying in the conflagration --

And cool hands cradle his head, careful mental fingers picking apart the terror, deconstructing it to dissolving composite atoms, and the Doctor finds himself clinging to the Master's suit jacket shaking uncontrollably, while around him the wind hums gently over the violet grass. The ghosts of Dalek ships shimmer overhead like mirages.

He can't stop shaking, can't stand yet, but the Master's hands are still buried in his hair and neither of them are actually pretending dignity. After a moment the Doctor ventures, his voice trembling a little too: "It could kill. Just keep you trapped in the illusion until you starve, or your hearts give out, or you go mad."

"Exactly," the Master says, disentangling himself slowly and standing. The Doctor looks up at him, silhouetted against the sky with the phantom Dalek ships flickering behind him. "I'm mad already," the Master says, and grins, a brilliant smug grin that the Doctor can't help returning. The Master offers him a hand and the Doctor staggers to his feet, both of them chuckling as they set off again towards the place from which these hallucinations emanate.

Then the Master stops laughing abruptly.

"Right," the Doctor says, sobering. "Not funny."

The Master flinches, nearly imperceptibly.

"Are you all right?" the Doctor asks.

"Fine," the Master says, but it comes out almost a snarl.

"Right," the Doctor says, stepping away a bit to give them distance. Moment of solidarity firmly over. But the Master flinches at _that_, too, his face going pale with anger; as though everything the Doctor's doing is greatly exaggerated, or calculated to be hurtful, which -- Oh.

"I wasn't ... laughing _at_ you," the Doctor ventures.

The Master swallows hard. "Of _course_ you weren't," he sneers.

"It's playing up again," the Doctor says, a bit bewildered; maybe the Fjemir, whatever it is, has worked out that they'll be far easier to pick off apart from each other, and is trying to separate them. But the Doctor can't figure out why it's not trying to convince him of all the exaggerated, calculated-to-hurt things the Master's doing. Then he nearly laughs again, because of _course_, there's no illusion in that. Nothing the Doctor doesn't already know. He tries venturing nearer to the Master. "It's trying to draw us apart."

The Master laughs harshly. "As if for a moment I even wanted to be near you," he sneers.

"No," the Doctor says, patiently, "come here for a moment, let me fix --"

The Master laughs again, an awful mirthless sound. "Right," he says, "right, of _course_," and his face twists into something ugly, hateful and betrayed. Such a _familiar_ expression. It wrenches the Doctor's hearts, and then they leap in terror, because the Master follows this with, "I _hate_ you," and turns, racing away from the Doctor.

The only good thing about the whole situation is that he's running towards the Fjemir structure, not away from it. The Doctor swears and tears off after him.

The Dalek ships are back; after a moment, the fire too, so that the Doctor slips and stumbles on phantom ashes, telling himself furiously that it's unreal, the searing heat, his urge to cough against the smoke. A Dalek appears ahead of him, screeches "EXTERMINATE!" and the Doctor grits his teeth and bowls it right over, its disoriented and disturbingly realistic scream behind him actually funny for the most fleeting of seconds. Ahead of him the Master flickers out of sight -- out of existence -- and the Doctor _does_ stumble then, a hammer-blow of loss, until still running he reaches into his mind and _wrenches_ and the momentary flood of relief at having the Master back lends him a burst of speed.

Whatever's behind this is trying too hard now. The jumble of terror cuts into him viscerally, but the Doctor's mind is racing above it now, intellect on a higher plane than all his mad misfiring neurons, and the Master meanwhile is faltering, stumbling to a shaking halt. The Doctor catches up to him, seizes his hand and it's horribly slapdash work but he _shoves_ the clarity into the Master's head, feels it slide straight past the drumming; the Master gasps and his hand goes bone-crushingly tight and they're running together across the whirl of violet plain under the bright sky, and then nearly without warning they've stumbled into a green space. Echoing. Quiet.

The Doctor leans back against a wall, coughing and gasping, trying to banish the phantom smoke. The Master falls back against the opposite wall and slides down to sit against its base.

"Oh do I hate you," he says conversationally.

The Doctor chuckles with relief. "Might've come up."

"No, I really do," the Master insists. "Ten minutes ago -- well. However long it was. When we started out I thought, what could you control with even the _threat_ of this thing?" He gestures. Sitting in the middle of the room, pulsing contentedly to itself in the eye of its generated storm, sits a neat little box positively bristling with wires. "Fjemir," the Master says offhandedly, and goes over to it, looking down. Snorts. "Cult of Evolution. The stupid wanker that invented this didn't understand the first _thing_ about evolution." He looks up at the Doctor. "Watch carefully."

"I'm watching," the Doctor says mildly.

The Master grins, a sharp savage grin, and brings his foot down hard right in the middle of the box.

A soundless explosion rocks the room and there Fjemir sits, broken and sadly spitting sparks from its wires. All the Master's hair is sticking on end. He scowls. The Doctor schools his face and manages to look appropriately serious.

"Oh, come on," the Master says, and stalks back out into the violet grass.

Following, the Doctor sees even from this distance that the protective shield's gone down from around the Gvemir city. After a moment he starts to see miniscule orange figures swarming up the buildings, and grins to himself, lengthens his stride until he's strolling along next to the Master.

"What now?" the Master asks after a moment. "Skulk off back to the TARDIS and miss any opportunity for praise and adoration, I expect."

"That's right," the Doctor says. They keep walking in silence. "Thanks," he adds, and glances over at the Master, who shrugs, a tight little shrug without looking at him. _You were afraid_, the Doctor thinks. _I was scared you'd be gone, but you were scared I'd _abandon_ you._ He takes a deep breath.

"Actually," he says, "I know a moon restaurant that does really wonderful dinners."


	9. 5x09: New Girls

Donna's never going to get tired of this.

She crouches behind the overturned barrels, catching her breath as silently as possible while the guards rush past. Stupid sods. Other than them -- well, no, even with them -- she's quite fond of this planet. Asmidiske, sixty-first century, First Great and Bountiful Human Empire, brilliant. Donna straightens, shakes the dust out of her jacket, and turns calmly on her heel, grinning.

There are no Daleks on Amidiske, which is just as it should be. Last two planets weren't as they should be, though; she had to reverse-engineer an entire timeline, and the night after, she had awful nightmares. She dreamt she was trapped on Skaro and made to watch everyone she cared for exterminated, starting with Mum and Gramps, her dad, Lance all over again, Rose and Martha and Captain Jack, then people she'd never known but the Doctor had, and she woke shaking. Her TARDIS, in an inexpert still-learning way, did its best to soothe her mind, and after a bit had taken her without prompting to Amidiske, which means her wonderful ship is learning fast: Amidiske, far from being Dalek-infested, has so far offered up various and highly enjoyable entertainments in the form of a great lunch overlooking the river, an afternoon's wistful window-shopping, a quick dinner and drink at a club, and a good exciting chase.

In fact the guards were after Donna under the impression that she's smuggling Caphian dragon eggs. Donna still hasn't figured out why, although she has the vague suspicion it may have something to do with her figure, and therefore half a mind to go chasing the guards in turn to give them a good shouting at. She doesn't need to. Hands in her pockets and walking at a good wander, she heads back to the club.

She's never going to get tired of this, but she is starting to think that far from being the alien pervert Donna sometimes only mostly jokingly suspected the Doctor of being, he actually had the right idea. It's not like she has anyone to laugh over the egg-smuggling with. She didn't have any company but her TARDIS to calm her down after that nightmare. Donna wonders if just anyone will do, and knows at once that she's certainly not going back in that club to pick up some space boyfriend. She wonders even more briefly is she should go find the Doctor again; then she imagines the look on his face when he discovers she has a TARDIS, and knows she can't do that either. She sighs and walks right past the door to the club and down along the street back towards the river.

The best bit about having the Doctor's brain jammed up inside hers is, well, having a brilliant Time Lord brain. The worst bit is that she _knows_ now what she looks like from the outside, which is both encouraging and very much otherwise. She isn't going to find a space boyfriend with her feminine wiles, that's certain. She reaches the bank of the river and leans on the energy rail overhanging it. The rail buzzes gently under her elbows. Anyway -- she smiles a little to herself -- she just needs a mate. Someone who won't mind a human Time Lord, for a start.

A couple of octopus things trundle past her, chatting animatedly. Donna watches them for a moment before turning back to the river and amending: someone a bit _humanoid_, too, that would be nice.

The octopus things seem to have the right idea, though; after a moment Donna pushes away from the railing and starts walking along the neat paved footpath that winds along following the river. Her TARDIS is up that way, anyway. She passes a crowd of teenage humanoids playing something with a vague resemblance to hacky-sack, and a little later passes the octopi again too; they're -- Donna's slightly horrified brain supplies the word _canoodling_, and she hurries on. Seems everyone else already has a space boyfriend.

Except a little further down the path, lit from beneath by the energy rail as she leans against it, is a lone girl. Early twenties if she's human, blonde hair. Funny thing is, she looks familiar, so with the faint tugging sense of coincidence pulling her in, which Donna's starting to recognise now, she goes over and leans casually on the rail a few feet away. Noticing her by virtue of the soft buzzing noises the rail makes, the girl looks over.

It's Jenny.

Donna grips the rail so hard it spits and crackles in protest. She becomes aware her mouth's open.

"Oh," Jenny says, and smiles. "Hello, Donna."

"_Jenny_," Donna manages. "Er. How --?"

Jenny's smile widens, her eyes crinkling at the corners with pleasure at her own cleverness. "Progenation machine, Time Lord biology -- I haven't quite figured it out myself yet. But I woke up again. How are you, Donna?" She says this last laughing a little, probably because Donna's still imitating a fish.

She has access to all the Doctor's complexities of love and terror for Jenny, but she just says, a bit blankly, "Good, I'm -- I'm good. What are you doing on Amidiske?"

"Oh," Jenny says, turning and rolling her shoulders back casually as she leans against the rail, facing away from the river now, "taking a bit of holiday. I've been traveling all over, you wouldn't believe. I talked a planet out of nuclear war! That was a few months ago. And I've had to do so much running, it's --"

"There she is!" comes a shout from the distance.

Donna looks up. "Oh, wonderful. I don't _have_ any dragon eggs, you clowns!" She turns to Jenny. "You were saying about running?"

Jenny laughs. "Which way?"

"Through here," Donna says, "come on!" and sets off down the path, Jenny on her heels. The guards haven't broken out weapons yet, which is good, and up ahead Donna can see the little waterside kiosk with its _closed_ sign; she grabs Jenny's elbow and veers towards it, ducking around the back and fumbling for the key.

"We're going to hide in _here_?" Jenny demands, but Donna has the door open by then and pulls Jenny into her TARDIS. "Oh," Jenny adds, and if Donna hadn't tactfully closed the door behind them she might have backed right back out. "Wow."

"My spaceship," Donna says, smiling. "It's a TARDIS. Time and relative dimensions in space. Guess what it does."

"It's bigger on the inside," Jenny says.

"Yeah. Yeah, that too." Donna wants to laugh, but instead she just walks up to the console and leans against it happily. "Come in properly, Jenny, go on. It also travels in time."

Jenny ventures forward, eyes wide, apparently attempting to look in every direction at once. "Because you and Dad are Time Lords," she says. A faint frown appears. She looks back at Donna. "Where is Dad?"

"'s a bit of a complicated story, really," Donna admits. "Tell you what. Let's go have a picnic somewhere brilliant, and we'll catch up. Mind leaving your spaceship behind?"

"If it travels in time, I can come back for it whenever I like," Jenny points out. "The picnic sounds lovely."

"Lovely," Donna echoes. She means to take Jenny somewhere really amazing, meteor showers on a beach at midnight or something, and is halfway through setting the coordinates before she realises how silly she's being and resets them for Chiswick, Earth, 2009, thankyouverymuch.

They emerge from a proper red phone booth with an _out of order_ sign hanging in the window, just up the street from Donna's house. Jenny peers around curiously. Donna's pleased to notice she's still dressed sensibly, in boots and trousers and t-shirt, so she doesn't actually look out of place here on the residential street. "Welcome to Earth," Donna says. "My home planet. Not your dad's."

"So then you're not a --?" Jenny starts, and Donna says, "It's really, really complicated, and I haven't checked in on my family in a while now, so I thought -- let's all have the picnic together, and you can see what a proper family's like."

"All right," Jenny says, after due consideration. "I'd like that."

So Donna walks back to her small ordinary wonderful house, and on a whim rings the doorbell rather than just letting herself in. After a moment, the door opens. It's Mum. Right. She should have thought of that. Mum stares at her for a long moment, then says, in an odd voice with emotion Donna can't quite place, "Where have you been?"

"All over," Donna says, and doesn't know what else to say. "Hi, Mum."

They all stand there.

"Oh," Donna adds, "and this is Jenny," stepping aside to let Jenny forward. Jenny smiles and says, "Hello, Donna's mum," and Mum nods a bit and then calls, "Dad! It's Donna!"

Oh thank god.

Gramps comes to the door as fast as he can. "Donna!" he says, and gives her a great big hug, and when he's introduced to Jenny he shakes her hand with enthusiasm until she's grinning again. "Now," Gramps says, "what's this about then, eh, sweetheart?"

"I was wondering if you wanted to come on a picnic with me," Donna says, and takes a deep breath. "Space picnic. Somewhere out there." She looks at Mum. "I'd really love it."

"I'm not having a picnic with that Doctor," Mum says. "Not after what he did to you."

"Oh -- no, he's not here," Donna assures her quickly. "It'd just be us and Jenny." She avoids Jenny's questioning look at Mum's obvious dislike for the Doctor, and presses on, "I've got tea in thermoses, and sandwiches and biscuits, and -- Mum, please, let's go to some seashore where you can see three moons and the water looks like green glass. Please."

"How can you, if you don't have the Doctor along?" Mum demands.

"I'll _show_ you," Donna says. "C'mon. Just over here."

Her strange little family -- she hasn't figured out yet whether Jenny counts -- follow her back to the phone booth TARDIS. "Here, is it like an upgrade?" Gramps asks, and Donna grins, says, "Oh yes it is." Jenny goes in, Gramps following, and despite Mum's look of outrage and astonishment at the idea of packing into a little space like that, Donna manages to get her inside too and is rewarded by Mum's expression changing swiftly to shocked wonder. "See?" Donna says softly.

Mum collects herself. "You said a beach, missy. Go on."

So Donna takes them to Ksora Six, a nature reserve and relatively minor jewel of the Seven Systems. They sit on a downy bluff overlooking the glass-green freshwater sea, two of the promised three moons hanging huge above them and another sliding up over the horizon. Jenny seems most interested in picking apart the various sandwiches and swapping bits of ingredients around between them, but both Gramps and Mum are insistent for the story, so Donna explains: the DoctorDonna, the Master ("just another Time Lord," she says, her one concession to a flat lie during the telling), Gallifrey, her own TARDIS. Jenny listens intently, sandwich forgotten, and starts asking her about Gallifrey and the Time War, which is when Donna starts hedging the answers again. It's not like Mum and Gramps really know what having the Doctor's brain _means_, because they don't know the Doctor and can't comprehend the millennium of memories, and on top of that she doesn't want them worrying about the War. Jenny catches onto this after a moment and starts in instead on asking questions about the hardboiled eggs, and what exactly a chicken is, then, which of course leads to questions about Jenny's upbringing. It's lucky Mum's seen Daleks and the like, or she might otherwise have made a scene; as is she looks disapproving but stays silent while Gramps listens raptly to the full story.

The third moon is fully risen now, with the sun a great fierce ball of light sinking into the sea to their left. A breeze picks up off the ocean, and Donna gets to her feet. "We'll need to get a move-on," she says. "Nights here the whole place practically freezes over. I'll drop you back at home, yeah?"

Mum, getting up, gives her a look. "And you're going to keep on running about outer space. How do you know your brain isn't going to burst?"

"I _promise_, Mum," Donna says. "I'll keep safe. Besides, I can't go back, be a temp again." She looks away. "You saw how miserable I was for those few months. I just -- I can't."

"I know," Mum admits, after a long silence. She opens her mouth, seems to think better of her next words, and heads back into Donna's TARDIS (still a red phone booth, to avoid confusing her family). After a moment Gramps shuffles up and pats Donna's arm before following.

"This is what families are like?" Jenny asks, helping Donna fold up the tablecloth.

"Sometimes," Donna answers, sighing.

She flies Mum and Gramps back home. Saying goodbye to them in the doorway of the TARDIS, she allows Gramps to lean in close and whisper, "Don't listen to Sylvia, sweetheart; go find him again. He'll want to know his Jenny's alive."

Donna smiles at him. "Course I will, Gramps. You take care."

"Stop in," Mum interjects. "Stop in sometimes, all right?"

"Sure," Donna says, and Mum surprises her by hugging her tight. She smiles into Mum's shoulder, hugs back, and stands in the door of her TARDIS, waving after them until they turn the corner. Then she shuts the door with a sigh of relief.

"They really care about you," Jenny observes, perched on one of the armchairs Donna has installed near the console. She stares at her hands for a bit. "Donna. If you've got Dad's brain now, what exactly does that make you to me? My mum? My sister? My also dad?"

"If you call me Mum _or_ Dad you'll be in serious trouble," Donna says. "Grounding-serious trouble." Jenny giggles, and Donna goes on, "No, really, I suppose it makes us ... sisters, more than anything else. Bit of the Doctor in who we are." She goes up to the console. "Where to?"

"Dunno," Jenny says. "I mean, if we're looking for civilisations to save ..." She draws her knees up to her chest. "Tell me about the Time War. _Properly_ this time."

So Donna sits down in the other armchair, and she explains. She explains the Daleks, as best she can, the War, how the Doctor's nearly the only Time Lord left now, and Jenny listens raptly. At one point she interrupts, "But I still don't understand why these Daleks are so much worse than anything else in the universe programmed to kill. What makes them the real threat?"

"Time," Donna says, and stops. _She_ understands it, the structure and the danger there in her head, but only because she has the Doctor's understanding of time. "Okay," she says. "Imagine -- imagine a house of cards, yeah? Only not cards, imagine you've got a lot of little wood blocks or something, all holding each other up." Jenny nods. "Right. Now, each of these little wood blocks is a bit of time. Not that time's actually made up of discrete events, but ... There are certain events which are fixed in time, and some of them are in flux. Now, if you take an event in flux -- your event is one of those little wooden blocks, right -- you take it out, your little house stays standing. But if you take out one of the fixed events -- if you move it, or change it -- suddenly that little house is getting really wobbly."

"Oh," Jenny says, and frowns. "So if the little blocks are events, what's the house?"

"The universe." Donna gives Jenny a lopsided smile. "The whole of time and space."

"So if you pull out too many fixed events, the universe ... just collapses?"

"Right," Donna says. "You destroy too many fundamental bits, reality just starts crumbling. And that's what the Daleks were doing, Jenny. Destroying everything they came across, all sorts of civilisations that wouldn't even come into being cos they were killed before they had a chance. That's why the War was so dangerous, and that's why the Time Lords got involved. It was _everyone's_ problem, and they couldn't stand by while it happened."

Jenny stays quiet for a long moment. "But now it's not over anymore."

"No." Donna already knows Jenny's next question, and adds, "But I'm one of the only people that knows, Jenny. When Dalek Caan threw himself back into the Time War, he broke through the timeline, but just a very little bit." The lopsided smile returns. "I got another analogy for you."

Jenny grins. "Go ahead."

"Right. So, you got some sort of big beach ball. Air inside, air outside. The air inside, that's the Time War, all locked away and not interacting with the world anymore. Air outside -- well. But along comes this one Dalek and sticks a little pinhole into the beach ball that's the time lock, and suddenly air can get in and out. That's me. I'm a bit of air, and I can live on either side. All the Doctor's lives that are on that side, if they come through to this one they can't tell all the other Time Lords are gone. But the one here -- the one that's your dad -- he can't sense the side that's in the lock, because he's outside it. My TARDIS knows where that little hole is, but his doesn't. And I don't know how the hole's supposed to be closed up again, because --"

"All the air inside the beach ball eventually gets out," Jenny guesses, nodding. "Have you got cosmic duct tape?"

Donna laughs. "Problem is," she says, "I think maybe I _am_ the cosmic duct tape. Everything I've done -- well, it's taken me back into the timeline that's got the War. And that makes me think, maybe I've got to do something to change it."

"We," Jenny says unexpectedly.

"What?"

"Maybe _we've_ got to do something to change it," Jenny repeats, with confidence this time. "If nothing that happens to you is a coincidence, why did you run into me again? You were there when I was born, and you just _happen_ to be on the same planet as me a few years later -- Donna! I'm the Doctor's daughter from a timeline with no Time Lords left. I'm something new too."

"You might be on to something." Donna gets up, prodded to her feet by excitement. "It is a bit funny. I mean, you're born a soldier and you learn to be other things too, which is -- well, it's almost the opposite of every other Time Lord there is. And then you die but you come _back_, and you still don't know how you did that one."

"Right!" Jenny agrees, beaming. It fades. "But Donna, what's actually _causing_ all this? I mean, you keep talking about coincidence like it's a pattern, so is it ... fate? Some sort of destiny?"

"No, it doesn't work like that." Donna sighs. "No weird analogies this time, I promise. Anything can be a fixed event, right, so something I have to do in the future -- it's fixed, and no matter what I do I'm going to get to it eventually. It doesn't mean I don't have free will. Just means Time does everything it possibly can to make things go they way they should, because they always have. Cos time's not a line, Jenny, it's just this big interconnected mess of stuff, and everything influences everything else and tries to pull it in the right direction, and ... am I making any sense?"

"I think so," Jenny says. "So you've got free will but you also have some sort of destiny."

"No, it --" Donna sighs again. "Well, it's close enough."

"So?" Jenny prompts after a moment. "What are we waiting for? Let's go to Gallifrey!"

"You really mean that, don't you?" Donna fiddles with one of the rings on her right hand for a moment. "Listen, Jenny, if you like we could phone the Doctor first. Let him know you're alive and all." She doesn't know if that's a smart idea -- she's worried enough about how he's coping with the Master, and giving him another shock is probably a bad plan -- but she does know Gramps is right, and it's the right thing to do.

"What if I'm in my teenage rebellion phase," Jenny says a bit slyly, "and I don't want Dad to know I'm off to mess around with his old wars?"

Donna snorts. "Well, when you put it like _that_ ..."

"Besides," Jenny says, "he lives outside the beach ball, and we're about to go in."

"That just sounds silly," Donna protests. "God, drop the beach ball metaphor. In fact forget I ever even said the words 'beach ball'."

Jenny grins. "Got it. Now what are we waiting for?"

Nothing, Donna thinks. Somewhere out there her mother's worried for her; somewhere the Doctor has the Master in his TARDIS, and doesn't know that Jenny's alive. Somewhere Jack and Martha don't know the Master is back, and somewhere else Romana doesn't know how the Time War will end. Somewhere, she thinks with a trace of irony, there are worlds to save, and worlds beyond saving; somewhere else the tea's getting cold.

She looks up with a grin, throws the handbrake, and says, "Come on, Jenny. We've got work to do."


	10. 5x10: Foils

## (Eye of Orion, Rigel, 2354)

The Master still isn't entirely sure how he let himself be talked into this. But here they are: sitting side-by-side on the Doctor's spread-out coat, his feet bare and toes wiggling a bit in the grass, which stretches out around them in rolling misty green hills dotted with ruins. The whole place is pervaded with a pleasant, soft sort of silence.

"It's not working," the Master announces after a moment. "Actually it just makes them worse. All the quiet." He taps out the drumbeat against the Doctor's arm, just to be annoying.

The Doctor turns to look at him, seemingly quite calm. "Stop that," he says without venom. "Honestly, I think you must like it or you would have got rid of it a long time ago. Can't I just take a look?"

"No," the Master says flatly. "You've spent more than enough time in my head lately, thanks."

"Well," the Doctor says, and runs a hand through his hair, an unconscious nervous gesture that certainly signals something, although the Master hasn't quite figured out what yet. It makes the Doctor look stupid, his hair sticking up in all directions like that. "I didn't touch anything," he adds after a moment, like he thinks the Master's suspecting him of rearranging the mental furniture.

The Master huffs out a breath and eases back to lean on his elbows and squint up at the pale blue sky. "I expect the sunsets here are just yellow," he says.

"What?" The Doctor turns to stare at him. With his hair still in silly spikes, he looks even more floored than usual at this non sequitur.

"Calm misty atmosphere, no wind to pick up the dust particles ..." The Master sits up properly again. "I love Earth after a good volcanic eruption. Those brilliant orange sunsets." He laughs shortly. "You know, I honestly had no idea how _easy_ it is to be homesick when it's not around to remind you it hasn't really been home for years."

The Doctor's quiet for a long moment. "Yeah," he says. He stares sightlessly out at the misty hills, and the Master, unobserved, watches his face: the tight skin at the corners of his eyes, the way his eyelashes flutter a little, the drawn set of his mouth. These are all things the Master had no time to appreciate when he was busy subjugating the Earth and building his army, and rather idly he wonders why. In the power vacuum left by Gallifrey's obliteration, he'd needed to create order, something new; but there is order and newness in this too: the Doctor, the Master, the quiet, the drums. He's always had trouble keeping ambition and the Doctor separate in his head.

He notices that the Doctor has turned to look at him, with a slightly wry curve to his mouth now. "What?" the Master snaps.

"I think," the Doctor says, turning from him and leaning forward to retrieve his trainers (cream, a little grass-stained now); "I think if you're not going to let me have a go at the drums, we're going for a walk."

"Is it really this dull traveling you?" the Master demands, but he reaches for his own socks and shoes, begins pulling them on. "No wonder they all leave you."

The Doctor ignores this entirely, which just goes to show he shouldn't be allowed into places like the Eye of Orion, where he actually manages to lose enough of his habitual tension to ignore the Master's lazier barbs. He just pulls on his trainers, waits until the Master has pulled himself to his feet, and retrieves the coat, shrugging it on in a protective sweep. "There's a memorial," he says. "Come on."

"Seriously, though," the Master goes on, casually, "it's considerate of you to let me out once in a while and so kindly show me the wonders of the universe."

The Doctor glances back at him, eyebrows going up. "If you'd rather stay in the TARDIS ..."

The Master sneers. The Doctor shrugs and resumes walking; walking in _ front_ of the Master, like he expects the Master to _follow_ him. The Master's more than tempted to find a convenient rock and bash his head in, just to see if the next regeneration is any less infuriating, no matter how inelegant this idea is. He doesn't. He sets his teeth and follows.

"Do you remember," he says after a few minutes' silent walking become too much, "when you were in your third body, and I was in my thirteenth?"

The Doctor shoots him a puzzled sideways look. "My memory's still fine, yeah."

"No, no, I was just thinking, it's a bit funny -- I'm only on my second, and you're -- what? Your ninth?"

"Tenth," the Doctor says, shoving his hands into his coat pockets.

"And just think," the Master goes on, grinning now, "you've destroyed two whole civilisations now! We should form a club."

"Don't," the Doctor says tiredly. "Going to tell me we're not so different after all? That's not going to happen, not unless I stop feeling --" He cuts himself off abruptly, coming to a halt.

"Yes?" the Master prompts, annoyed.

"That's funny," the Doctor mutters, apparently to himself. "I can't have got turned around ..."

The Master snorts. "You're lost."

"No," the Doctor says. "No, there's -- there's a memorial here. There's _supposed_ to be a memorial, right _here_, and great big stones don't just get up and walk away." The Doctor pauses. "Well. Some of them. But not the ones here!"

Rolling his eyes, the Master drawls, "So your TARDIS got the century wrong. This is hardly news."

"But she didn't," the Doctor says, and the look he throws the Master is clearly convinced of this. "Something must've intercepted the causality that led to its being built." And he looks angry now, as though some great heap of rock really is one of the only things keeping his guilt at bay. The Master feels a flare of disappointment at this. So it's true: when he died in the Doctor's arms, it really was just the Time War all over again. What arrogance to suppose otherwise.

"You look for it, then," he snaps, and stalks off in the direction of the TARDIS. The Doctor doesn't follow him. Of course.

He slams his way inside, gives the central console a kick as he passes it (despite the fact that it probably hurts him much worse than it hurts her) and stomps down to the library to deface the Doctor's first edition hardcover _Lord of the Rings_ by writing bits of advice to Saruman in the margins.

 

## (The Vortex)

At some point the Doctor returns, because the TARDIS rumbles to life around him and there follows the unmistakable feeling of travel into the Vortex. The Master finishes scrawling in _and if you leave him on top of the tower he's just as likely to die too soon as get rescued_ and tosses the book aside. The Doctor is bound to find him in the library, so he leaves.

The one good thing about the Doctor's TARDIS, he's willing to concede, is that she's had quite a lot of time to accumulate interesting rooms. The Doctor's wardrobe is located halfway down a dizzyingly long helix staircase, separate from the one that leads to the library; on the platform above the wardrobe there's a somewhat impromptu-looking bowling alley, and on the ground floor below, a fairly impressive collection of tropical plants. Next door is the zeppelin hangar, so dusty the Doctor's obviously forgotten about it for quite some time, and down the corridor from there the Master finds a ballroom, with gramophone and impressive record collection. Up the sweeping ballroom stairs and through the double doors is a fencing gallery that apparently does time as a real gallery as well, at least judging from the da Vinci sketches pushpinned into the far wall. The Master wanders past the rack of fencing foils and amuses himself for quite some time reading all the backwards notes in among the sketches.

Then he hears the ballroom doors swing open, and freezes.

The doors close; there, the unmistakable squeak of trainers across the shining floor. The Master grits his teeth. After a moment, the Doctor asks, cautious: "What have I done?"

The Master blinks. That isn't actually what he was expecting.

"I suppose -- well, I've been trying to think what it was," the Doctor goes on, "and I know you hate being on the TARDIS with me but there really isn't anything for it; you _know_ I can't trust you, and honestly wherever you go I'm bound to get there eventually so this saves a bit of time, all told."

That tears a short harsh laugh from the Master. He's been staring at the same sketch of a stupid little flower for at least the past thirty seconds.

"Or," the Doctor ventures, "well, is it the drums? I know you don't want me in your head but I can't imagine it's very nice having that in your head either, so --" He must see the Master's shoulders stiffen, because he adds hastily, "Or, well, it's your mind, I just -- I'm sorry, I'm --"

"No you're not," the Master says.

Into the ensuing silence, the Doctor says, "What was that?"

The Master spins to face him: out of his coat, hair a bit saner now, trainers still grass-stained, and even from here the Master can see his freckles, can see that his tie's come a bit loose. The Master's fingers itch. He bites out, "You're not _sorry_. You're unhappy and you don't know what to do about it so you just go around _apologising_ all the time as though it's supposed to make a difference. Do you know how _pathetic_ that is? Really?"

Through this recitation the Doctor looks steadily more indignant and alarmed, and he finally makes a sort of spluttering noise and protests, "That's -- absolutely, that's not at _all_ \--" and stops when the Master laughs at him.

"What," the Master says, "go on, tell me how you plan to make me better."

"Stop it," the Doctor says quietly.

The Master laughs again. He's feeling jittery, and the rack of fencing foils is still right there, so he walks over and pulls a foil out, tosses it absently from hand to hand without looking at the Doctor. "How comforting to know you only want to talk to me when you're trying to talk me out of something." He adopts a mocking falsetto. " 'Oh no, Master, don't hurt the humans! They're my favourite! Can't we just _talk_ about this?' " He looks up. "So _talk_," he says, and freezes.

The Doctor is eyeing him warily and -- quite sensibly, the Master concedes -- holding a foil of his own. The Master giggles. "_Seriously_?"

"You'll forgive me if I don't like the idea of you being armed," the Doctor says with great steadiness.

"If that's how you want to play it," the Master says, shrugging loosely, and brings his blade up in a vicious arc. The Doctor blocks the upswing with a resounding clash -- real steel then, the Master decides with a grin -- and slides back a step, smoothly. This body is more graceful than the Master's given him credit for.

"No," the Doctor says, still in tones of great calm, "but I expect you want to get a bit of anger out."

That's true enough to be angering all by itself, so the Master darts forward, a series of blows from above that the Doctor blocks neatly, one after another. By the end of this first attack, though, his eyes are shining and his breathing has picked up. He's not as collected as all that, but the Master knows that; the Master _always_ knows that. The Master goes back a step, holds his foil out from his body -- pause -- and one-handed shrugs out of his suit-jacket. The Doctor sees this and does the same, which surprises the Master a little, although not enough to bring the foil up again nearly before the Doctor's jacket is off. The Doctor parries only just in time, which is just typical, and the Master darts forward again, laughing, attack after attack, with the Doctor simply defending.

"Fight _back_," the Master snarls finally.

"No," the Doctor says, a bit breathlessly, foil snaking around the Master's and twisting away with another smooth step backwards, his tie starting to come undone; for a moment the Master can't breathe either, and then he's suddenly so angry he can barely see.

"You," he says, "I can't _believe_," and leaps forward again, speaking with a catch around each attempted hit, "You didn't take me to the Eye of Orion for the _drumming_, you took me there for the _memorial_ \--" The Doctor stumbles back, his hair falling into his eyes, nearly tripping over his own feet; the Master swings his foil around and hisses, "It's not about _me_, you just don't want to be _alone_, you --" and each word punctuated with a blow "-- selfish -- pathetic -- arrogant --"

And on that last the Doctor darts forward neatly and knocks the foil from the Master's hand.

The Master freezes, the tip of the Doctor's blade pressed to his throat just above his shirt collar. He doesn't even swallow. These aren't practice foils, they're the genuine article, and while the Master doesn't _think_ the Doctor's about to do something rash, he's not about to make any sudden movements, either.

"I know," the Doctor says, breathing hard. His hand doesn't waver but there's something unsteady about him, in the look he's giving the Master. "And I _knew_. I was given a message, a long time ago, _you are not alone_, and do you know how hard I tried not to think it? I knew it was you -- I _hoped_ it was you -- do you know how awful that is? When Martha told me about the fob watch, before you opened it, I knew then, too. I didn't think for a moment it would be some stuffy old chancellor, or someone barely out of their first century, because --" he shudders, outstretched arm taut "-- it wouldn't mean I wasn't alone, do you see? It _had_ to be you, it -- it always ..."

He trails off and slowly, slowly, lowers the blade. His eyes haven't yet left the Master's face.

Something peculiar is happening in the Master's chest, a sensation halfway between terror and triumph. He can't think of anything to say.

"Well?" the Doctor prompts after a moment. There's a peculiarly mischievous glitter in his eye. "Pick up your foil, we're not done yet."

The Master crouches slowly to retrieve his foil, keeping his eyes on the Doctor. The moment his hand closes around the hilt he's back on his feet and at the Doctor, and this time the Doctor responds in earnest, blow for blow, riposte after parry and it becomes a dance.

Halfway through a lunge, with the Doctor sidestepping neatly, a manic grin on his face and his trainers squeaking along the floor, the Master is visited with the peculiar notion that he is witness to one of the most beautiful things in the universe. It isn't a sentimental thought; it's nearly a frightened one.

With a burst of adrenaline he drives the Doctor back against the double doors; the Doctor fumbles with the handle for a moment, manages to yank one door open, and still parrying blows backs his way down onto the ballroom staircase.

"Show off," the Master says.

"A bit, yeah," the Doctor concedes, still grinning like mad, navigating his way backwards down the stairs pursued by the Master's blade as though he does this sort of thing every day. It's possible. The Doctor's delight is catching; the Master finds himself grinning too, his feet hitting level floor before he has to skip back up a step and back down.

The last two Time Lords in existence, he thinks, full of a strange wild happiness, fencing together in their shirtsleeves across a ballroom floor.

This time when he backs the Doctor into a corner there is no door to save him. The Doctor slams back into the wall, their blades caught pressed tight at the hilts. The Doctor's eyes go very wide.

"Surrender," the Master says, half hiss, half laughter.

And the Doctor does something unexpected. He does.

He lets go of the foil, letting it clatter to the floor, and suddenly it's all defenses down, his mind opening up so quick and smooth that for a moment the Master has an overwhelming sense of vertigo, and far from a bombardment, it's a fall: headlong in, and this time there is no shattering grief, no terrifying overwhelming gratefulness; the Doctor's mind is a familiar thing, an endless brilliant constellation of jokes and eccentricities and mad slapdash solutions, wellings of quiet sadness and fierce joy. For a moment the Master has the mad disorientating sensation of seeing out of the Doctor's eyes and his own at once, something in his own face he can't recognise, and though the Doctor can he's good enough to say nothing.

"How do you know I won't use this to ruin you?" the Master asks, but he asks it wrong, with the Doctor's voice and the Doctor's moving lips, and both of them shudder. "You never could," the Doctor says, neither challenge nor hope but a simple observation, and it's only when the Master hears himself saying it, that quiet fact, that he realises the Doctor's in his head too. Not fixing, nor changing, nor uninvited, and he says -- his voice? he doesn't know -- "We should --" which is maybe a protest, and maybe too dignified for a plea, but his fingers are tugging the Doctor's tie the rest of the way undone and the Doctor, with those thin graceful hands, is fumbling with the Master's tie too, and the buttons of his shirt. It must be the Doctor again that says, "I know," with a wealth of meaning: what they should and should not do, what he has always known and ignored until the War tore away those defenses.

For just one moment the Master is only himself, sees from the outside how the Doctor looks right here right now and memorises it, collar askew and throat bobbing and mouth a little open, eyes wide and dark and not lost at all.

The stupid tragic wonderful thing is quite simple, really: even immersed in each other's minds, they're not going to change anything and risk ruining a single moment. The Master laughs and laughs and the Doctor seizes firm hold of his shirt collar and drags him in for a kiss.

It's nearly a torture to kiss slowly after so long, but they do, gentle, taking their time, feeding the sensation carefully back and forth between their minds, another game. It builds nearly to fireworks behind their eyes, but the Master _hates_ to lose; a moment longer and the Doctor makes a soft keening sound, arching against him, in their heads _more please more_. He's too far gone already to laugh but he slides careful hands under the Doctor's shirt and skimming down his sides; _too skinny by half it's just right thank you_ and the Doctor makes that little sound again. Understands. Breaks the kiss and throws back his head gasping so the Master doesn't have to, takes all they're feeling and pulls it through and amplifies it, a willing conduit.

The Master swears and suddenly it's no longer teasing; they tear at each other's clothes, neither of them remembering -- caring -- to close the loop on this, an exponential build of desperation. Kiss again, while the world narrows: just each other, no War, no heroics, not even the drums, not even the TARDIS; just the Doctor and the Master, starved for it and clinging together body and mind. The Master leaves bruises on the Doctor's hips and they both feel it, the Doctor scratches at the Master's shoulders and they both feel it; the Doctor chokes on a little whimper, just one, and the exponential feedback inside their heads goes into overload, breaks.

They collapse together in a trembling heap, sticky and laughing breathlessly with buttons scattered about them and the Doctor's left shoe still on. "I --" he says, mostly just himself, and the Master says, "I know, I know," all shades of meaning understood.

The Doctor's mobile rings.

They stare at each other. "Oh, perfect," the Master says.

"Must be Martha." The Doctor flops forward and manages to snag a leg of his trousers. He drags them over and fumbles through the pockets for a moment; glowing marble, rubber duck, mobile. He flips it open. "Martha! Hi."

The Master has a brief internal debate: get dressed, or take advantage of the Doctor's lack of clothing while on the phone? Then he imagines the trouble the Doctor might get into with Martha if he chooses the latter option, and the idea of the Doctor on the receiving end of Martha Jones' wrath is not one he relishes, perhaps not so oddly after all. He gets to his feet, stretching, and goes to assess the damage done to his shirt.

"Good, we're -- I'm good," the Doctor's saying meanwhile. "Hmm? No," he glances over at the Master, "hasn't made any trouble. Oh, well. Got a bit of a mystery -- disappearing memorials and things -- not urgent, no." Then, to the Master's interest, he goes a bit pale. "_Tomorrow_? Martha, you've got to give me a bit of notice with these --" He gulps. "Fine. Yes. Of course I'll be there. Yeah. See you."

He hangs up, eyeing the phone.

"What things?" the Master asks with mild interest, shimmying into his trousers.

"Wedding," the Doctor says in tones of faint horror. "I'm invited to Martha's wedding."

The Master smirks. "You're rubbish at those. Here." He tosses the Doctor his tie.

"I know," the Doctor says, rubbing the back of his neck, a habit that looks even more endear--_ridiculous_ when he's naked. "I'd better go. Blimey, you don't think I could go in wearing something normal? I have really bad luck whenever I wear my tux."

"Stop babbling," the Master instructs him, doing up his own shirt as best he can given that it's missing half the buttons, "find your tux, try to look a little bit less shagged, and go to her stupid wedding."

"And what'll you do?" the Doctor asks, obviously hoping the Master's planning to get up to something suspicious.

The Master completely fails to look pious, although he might manage smug and maybe innocent. "I thought I'd do a bit of reading."

After all, the Doctor does have quite a lot of books to deface.


	11. 5x11: Sixpence in Her Shoe

## (London, Earth, 2009)

"Is it normal to be more terrified on your wedding day than when you think you might have to blow up the Earth?" Martha asks, scrutinizing herself in the mirror. It all looks fine, and the dress fits right, and her hair is behaving itself.

"Yes," Gwen says in answer to her question, just as Tish says, "No."

Martha laughs. "I thought so. Right." She turns from the mirror. "All good?"

"You look lovely," Gwen assures her. "Now, any horrible second thoughts? Any horrible aliens? No? Then you're good."

"Yeah, course," Martha says, taking a deep breath. "Is everyone here? Oh my God I've got butterflies."

"Shut up and let me be properly jealous," Tish advises. "Nearly everyone. Haven't seen the Doctor yet."

"Well, he's not the sort to enjoy weddings, and he does have --" Martha pauses. She hasn't actually told her family the Master's back; she can hardly imagine them taking it calmly. "-- a busy life," she supplies. "Besides, I'm not getting married to prove anything to him." She squares her shoulders. "Ready."

Tish squeals with delight and gives Martha a hug. "I'll fetch Dad," she says, and darts from the room.

Gwen gives Martha a wry little smile. "No Donna, then?"

"Haven't heard from her since I saw her last," Martha says, shrugging and trying very hard not to mind. "It's all right, she can't have known. Oh my God!" this last because the music is starting up, and Gwen shoos her out into the front hall where Dad's waiting, looking incredibly happy and quite dapper in his suit. Martha latches onto his arm, the doors swing open, and she walks.

They've just rented out a little local church for the afternoon, chapel and reception, so it's not as though Martha wasn't _expecting_ all the pews to be jammed full of grinning people, but the whole thing is a bit overwhelming. Martha finds herself wishing a bit that the entire back row of guests would turn out to be horrible carnivorous aliens in disguise, because at least then she'd know what she was _doing_. Instead she grips tight to Dad's arm and looks up at the altar: Tom, standing there, actually clean-shaven for once, and even from all the way across the room the look he gives her is half loving wonder, half _God I wish there were horrible carnivorous aliens in disguise in the back row_, and everything just slots neatly into place. Martha breaks into a beaming grin.

The grin doesn't leave for the next good while; her cheeks start to ache, and Tom is wonderful, and those are more or less the only facts Martha manages to keep straight. The ceremony goes by in a blur, with rings and recitations and Martha's fairly sure at some point she says _I do_, because Tom's hands are on the small of her back and her arms are flung round his neck and they're kissing in front of a whole roomful of people.

Out in the reception hall, Martha endures hugs from relatives and friends and in-laws (God help her _in-laws_) and Leo's smirking "Better me than you, mate," until Martha gives the DJ pleading eyes and she has a dance with Dad, a dance with Tom, a dance with Jack. "You couldn't have worn something besides that mad army jacket?" Martha demands as he twirls her, and he says with a laugh, "These are my best clothes, Dr Jones!"

Another dance with Tom -- Martha's too happy and full of adrenaline still to be slipping off the dance floor and doing something soppy like feeding Tom cake -- and then at a tap on her shoulder Martha turns against someone skinny in a well-cut tux and gapes up at the Doctor, who beams down at her.

"You made it!" Martha exclaims, and flings her arms around him. He laughs, picking her up and spinning her around before setting her back on the ground and saying, "I saw this really great-looking cake over there, all uneaten because apparently the bride's having too much fun out here ..."

"Fine, fine," Martha says, laughing, and lets herself be dragged off to be soppy about the cake with Tom. Before long Tom and the Doctor are chatting away very earnestly about alien physiology and Martha manages to slip off into the corridor for a moment to just take a few deep breaths and try not to burst into tears of happiness or something equally mad.

Problem is, the corridor's not empty: there's a girl sitting a little ways down against the wall, wearing a very nice shimmering blue dress and holding a silver shoe in her hand, glaring at it. "Er," Martha says, "'scuse me, can I help you?"

The girl looks up and Martha adds, quite without meaning to, "Oh my God when I thought aliens I didn't ask for oh my God _Jenny_!"

"Hi!" Jenny says. "Yes, I'm not dead. I haven't figured out the point of heeled shoes, though. They won't be much use if you have to run, will they? I came with Donna, she's just popped off to the loo."

"Oh," Martha says faintly. "Yeah, okay. Er, Jenny, do you know -- you _do_ know the Doctor's in there? Just inside reception?"

"Really?" Jenny jumps to her (bare) feet. She looks shifty for a moment, then says earnestly, "The ceremony was beautiful, and I love cake. I'm very happy for you, Martha," and slips past her back into reception.

"No, wait --" Martha tries, but the door's already swung closed. Well. She was hoping her wedding would be interesting.

***

Donna and Jenny had been visiting Mum and Gramps, Jenny reading the sports section with fascination and Donna just sort of skimming the announcements, when she saw the notice for Tom and Martha's wedding yesterday afternoon. So they'd gone two days back for a day out shopping in London, and then dropped in on the wedding.

Problem is, Donna didn't take into account how she feels about weddings. So here she is in the loo, splashing water on her face and giving her reflection a glare. Bad enough that her own wedding didn't go off so well, all the bits of the Doctor in her head are less than fond of weddings too. She sighs, straightens her shoulders, and pushes back out into the corridor.

She's not expecting Martha to be standing there, staring in some astonishment at the door back into reception. Martha spots Donna at once, and far from looking surprised, says, "Oh thank God. Donna, Jenny just went in there to look for the Doctor."

"Of course she did," Donna says. "That's just great. Hurry up, then, let's go catch her before the Doctor realises he'll really have to find something else to be sad about than being the last of his kind."

Martha darts her a wry look. "Being part him suits you," she says.

"Yeah, well, I only got the good bits," Donna returns. "C'mon."

Belatedly she realises that Jenny is going to lead to a lot of questions, but so is she. Nothing for it, though: she spots the Doctor lurking near the buffet table clutching protectively at a cup of punch, and a moment later Martha's left her side, presumably having located Jenny. Donna hurries over, seizes the Doctor's wrist, and before he can protest has dragged him into a corner and said, "We need to talk."

To her astonishment, rather than demanding a full explanation for her appearance the Doctor contrives to look remarkably shifty and say, "Do we?"

She stares at him. "All right, what've you done?"

"Nothing!" he says, and "Hang on, _Donna_! Where have you been? What's going on?"

"Long story," Donna replies firmly, "which will come after the one you're gonna tell first." She lowers her voice a little, not that anyone's listening. "How's it been?"

"Fine! Fine, it's been, it's --" The Doctor takes a deep breath and won't actually meet her eyes. "He hasn't really tried escaping or destroying civilisations yet, which is probably a good sign. Anyway when he died on me that was mostly a -- a fit of pique, a temper tantrum, I don't think he really minds life in the TARDIS ..." He trails off under Donna's look. "What?"

"Want me to give you a list of things he's done?" Donna asks. "People and planets destroyed? I mean, you have to give him credit, it's a pretty impressive résumé of evil." She smiles tightly. "But you know all that, if I do. Thing is, Doctor, I know it objectively."

The Doctor nods, eyes still firmly fixed on his trainers.

Donna sighs. "Listen," she says, "I won't -- Doctor. Look at me. Right here, only other person in the universe you can actually talk to about this, so _talk_ to me."

He does look up at her then, warily. "I ... may have made a bit of a mistake," he admits after a moment. "I may have actually told him it's personal. Well. Not _told_, precisely, more ... shown." He looks honestly embarrassed.

Donna sorts through this, and decides that _it's personal_ means the Doctor let the Master know it's specifically the Master who is important, which any blind idiot should be able to see despite both of them pretending otherwise for centuries; _shown not told_, on the other hand, probably doesn't mean the Doctor got his feelings out via metaphoric poetry.

"Does _everyone_ have a space boyfriend except me?" Donna demands, before the implications catch up with her and her eyes go very wide. "My god, what are you going to _do_?"

The Doctor shrugs slightly. "I won't forget what he's capable of. I'll keep him around, and I'll ... make sure he doesn't get into trouble, that was the plan either way."

"Right." Donna sighs. "Okay, ready for the next shock?"

"Always," the Doctor says, with a wry smile.

"Well." Donna bites her lip for a moment, giving him a good long look. She took Jenny in stride, though, and she's processing the idea of the Doctor and the Master shagging well enough, although she suspects that as soon as she gets a minute to herself all those memories in her brain are going to file out and give a dissertation on what a _spectacularly_ bad idea it is, and how statistically likely to result in a body count. For the moment she says, quite calmly, "Jenny's not dead."

The Doctor goes very still. "Jenny. But she -- it was just a regular bullet, it shouldn't have delayed regeneration --"

"Tell that to her," Donna says. "Come on, she's here. I think she's telling Martha about the time she stopped a nuclear war. It's one of her favourites."

"She _what_?" the Doctor demands, trailing helplessly after Donna.

They find Jenny and Martha to one side of the dance floor, Jenny chatting away animatedly. She catches sight of the Doctor and comes to an abrupt stop. Martha looks wary. Donna elbows the Doctor.

"Hi," the Doctor offers.

Jenny smiles tentatively. "Hi, Dad."

The Doctor takes a hesitant step forward, and then they're hugging enthusiastically and smiling nearly to split their faces and the Doctor says, "How?" and Jenny shrugs and says, "I still have no idea," and she's off, explaining what she's been doing. The Doctor listens raptly, beaming.

Martha edges over to Donna. "Do you get the feeling," she says, "that something's just bound to happen now? Something really weird?"

"Yeah, about that," Donna says, and briefly debates trying to explain the pulling coincidences and the interconnectedness of time before she settles for, "It would be a lot weirder if something weird _didn't_ happen, and I'm really sorry, just sort of ahead of time, _really_ sorry it's at your wedding. Cos now we've met up with the Doctor again ..."

"Don't worry." Martha gives her a wry look. "Half the people here are Torchwood or family. It'll be old hat, and for the rest we've got Retcon."

Donna snorts. "You seriously brought memory drugs to your own wedding, _just in case_?"

"Happened at Gwen's," Martha says philosophically.

"So how is it, then, being married?" Donna asks.

Martha looks all set to say it's the best thing that's ever happened to her when a chorus of screams erupts from the corridor. A good portion of the guests start _towards_ the noise, which seems to prove Martha's point; the Doctor naturally gets there first, with Donna just after him.

A trio of girls on their way back from the loo are pressed against the corridor wall in terror, although they're being completely ignored by the huge ant-shaped creatures, armor-carapaced and holding complicated energy weapons. They're swarming around the vending machine at the end of the corridor, and Donna's stomach gives a lurch of terror.

"What are they --?" The Doctor turns to Donna in bewilderment. "Do they want _snacks_?"

"No," Donna says dully. "Doctor, that's my --"

The ant aliens point their energy weapons at the vending machine and, as one, fire. Donna feels it power down and her one small human heart sinks horribly, and then further as she realises the implications. Without consultation she seizes the Doctor's hand and drags him back through the door. "Jack!" she calls, looking around; he turns up at her shoulder and she says, "Aliens, armed, have Torchwood take care of it," and drags the protesting Doctor back across the room and into a coat closet.

The door slams shut and leaves them in the muffled dark. The Doctor shakes Donna's hand off. "What's going on?" he demands.

Donna takes a deep breath and says, as calmly as possible, "That vending machine is -- was -- my TARDIS, those aliens had the technology to track down a Type 80 and incapacitate it, which means they're allied with the Daleks; they're probably going to try destroying us next which is why we're letting Torchwood deal with it, and I think the beach ball just burst."

She can feel the Doctor staring at her through the dark.

"You have a TARDIS," he says flatly.

"Had," Donna corrects, and has to press the back of her hand to her mouth for a moment to keep from crying. "They took down her defenses."

"A TARDIS," the Doctor repeats. "That you have. Had. Creatures allied with _Daleks_, and you -- what beach ball?"

Donna gives a watery chuckle. "'s how I explained the Time War's lock to Jenny. You know how Caan punched a hole through? I think it's getting bigger."

"But I can't -- I can't sense any other Time Lords," the Doctor says, with an edge of desperation. "It's _over_, Donna."

"It isn't," Donna corrects gently. "Doctor, a few weeks ago I met Romana. In the Citadel. Just at the _beginning_ of the War."

The Doctor doesn't ask why she didn't tell him. He just sits still for a bit, working it out. "So those coincidences," he says at last, "they lead to you influencing the Time War." She can see him dimly now through the chinks of light that filter in from the reception room. He swallows. "It's -- Donna, do you know how dangerous -- I _can't_ be involved, I might disrupt the whole -- I might create a giant paradox --"

"Or you might have gone right around that fixed event, the first time through," Donna says gently. "I wanted to keep you out, honestly I did, but here you are. And here I am. And the Master, and Jenny."

"Yeah," the Doctor says, and shudders. "Donna. I don't want to."

She reaches out and takes his hand, rubs her thumb over the bony knuckles. "I know." She doesn't suggest it might be worth it to make a difference; he's already made a difference, made worlds of them, and asking him to play the War again, knowing the outcome might be terrible, is unnecessarily cruel. "But if my TARDIS is still alive, she's definitely not working, and I can't stay here. I have to get back, and you're the only way now."

He nods. He says: "I don't want to do that to Jenny. I can't believe _you_ were doing that to Jenny."

"She wanted to," Donna says. "Her idea."

"She's a _kid_," the Doctor protests.

"She's an important kid," Donna counters. "I know, Doctor, and I know you just say you're a traveler, and I know that you don't want to do this, but it's _important_, it's more important than anything --"

"I know," the Doctor says. Hisses out a breath between his teeth. "And the Master needs to be there too. Donna, this isn't inspiring me with confidence."

Donna's mouth twists into a reluctant smile. "I know," she echoes. "But I think we've got to." The commotion outside is dying down, so she opens the closet door cautiously.

"That's where you got to!" Martha says, coming over at once. Her wedding dress is torn at the hem and she looks quite pleased. "Those bug things are taken care of, and Jack's serving the drinks, so we'll be all right in an hour."

"I don't think we can stay," Donna apologises. "Worlds to save, that sort of thing."

She leaves the Doctor to explain this and to collect Jenny, and goes out into the corridor. Mickey and Ianto look up from bagging the ant aliens to give her nods, and she smiles back at them, although it feels more like a grimace. She goes over to her TARDIS, slips inside, and shudders: no response. All lights are off. It just _sits_ there, a nonworking machine, and she wants to cry again.

She hears the Doctor come in behind her. After a moment he slides a hand around her shoulders, and Jenny steps up on the other side and slips her hand into Donna's, squeezing lightly. They stay standing there for a long moment. Donna doesn't ask if she can be fixed.

"Right," she says finally. "Let's go." Swallows. "I can navigate us back to Gallifrey even with your TARDIS, Doctor."

They leave the church together, the three of them holding hands, and walk up the street through the overcast day to the Doctor's TARDIS. Donna's heart lifts a little, a song in her head rising to greet her. Inside, the Doctor immediately retreats, presumably to find the Master and explain the situation. Jenny stays in the console room with Donna, helping her type in the coordinates and navigate out into the Vortex.

 

## (The Vortex)

The trip to Gallifrey is, relatively, a long one, so Donna leaves Jenny monitoring their flight and wanders down to the library. She discovers a neat pile of books on one table, which means it must be the Master's reading material. She goes through it, snorting softly at the annotations, and sets the current book aside carefully when she hears someone step into the room behind her.

"As evil goes it's sort of petty," she says, turning.

"How nice to see you again at last, Miss Noble," the Master counters, leaning against the door frame. "I don't suppose you actually know what you're _doing_."

"Pot, kettle," Donna says. "Right now I'd say I'm doing a much better job making the Doctor's life miserable than you are."

"You're probably right," the Master agrees, and smiles slowly.

"Yeah." Donna feels suddenly a bit funny about the whole thing; if this man was the typical sketchy boyfriend, she'd just give him the speech wherein she makes very clear that said boyfriend keeping his own testicles is strongly reliant upon him treating her mate right. Somehow she suspects that isn't the worst threat the Master's ever received, and moreover that he really isn't the typical sketchy boyfriend. She sighs. "I'm not going to tell you to treat him properly, but you've got his attention now, so don't start trying to take over planets as, I dunno, foreplay."

He gives her a somewhat astonished look. All he says, though, is "You're a good deal blunter than he is."

Donna shrugs. "I've got his memories, not his hang-ups. Honestly I think you're a bit rubbish."

The Master laughs. "And I think you're a petty pale imitation as well as ludicrously easy to kill. How nice for us."

"So," Donna says, ignoring this, "planning to run again this time?"

"Possibly," the Master concedes. "I do so enjoy staying alive."

"At least you have a few spares."

He laughs again, says "Very true" and grabs white-knuckled at the door lintel as the TARDIS gives a lurch. "Transduction barrier?"

"Yeah." She pushes past him and runs up the stairs. When she arrives in the console room Jenny's still there along with the Doctor, and the Master comes in a moment later. Between the four of them they manage to navigate the TARDIS in for a smooth landing; something about the mechanics of this niggles at Donna's brain, but she's too busy worrying about landing procedures to figure out quite what.

Then they've landed in the Citadel on Gallifrey. No going back now.

They take a nearly collective breath, and turn towards the door, to head ever faster toward that one fixed point in time.


	12. 5x12: Arcadia

## (Gallifrey, Kasterborous, 5854.6 RE)

The Doctor can't remember ever feeling quite like this. Out the windows they pass he can see the brilliant orange sky, the distant shining mountains; Donna leads them with confidence in her step, Jenny gazing around in curious wonder. The Doctor can taste smoke in the back of his throat, drifts after them like a following ghost. The Master keeps darting him concerned glances. He ignores this. He's fine.

Then the Master seizes his arm and drags him into an alcove at a window, where he can see the sky. He shudders, tries to extract himself from the Master's grip, and the Master's hand tightens. "Long-suffering has always been a terrible look on you," the Master hisses. "You're here and it hasn't burnt yet."

"Oi!" Donna calls. "There's a time and a place for that!"

The Doctor steps out from the alcove. "Just had to -- coming, Donna, we're right behind you."

Donna gives him a wry little smile and keeps going. They turn inwards: through vaulted rooms, beautiful and spare, and the Doctor's _not_ fine; he can't quite breathe properly, and after a while the Master takes hold of his wrist in a proprietary grip he can't actually bring himself to resent right now. He observes, in a strange detached way, that Donna obviously knows where she's going, has walked these corridors many times. He wonders how she can stand it.

Eventually they come to a door marked with the Seal of Rassilon, alone at the end of a corridor, and Donna knocks. It swings open and the Doctor thinks, a bolt of shock to his brain, _Romana_. But he goes inside with the rest of them, and there she is; they've come the back way into her private war room, and she's so tired. He wonders how late it is.

"Donna," Romana says, eyebrows going up. "Company?"

"Yeah," Donna says, and is off at high speed tracing the coincidences, all the things that have drawn them in. Her voice goes thick with grief when she describes the destruction of her TARDIS, but she gets through it, and Romana listens.

When Donna's finished, Romana looks around at them all in consideration. Her gaze lights on the Master. "So you're necessary after all. I opposed it, you know. Bringing you back after the Restitution -- well, the Daleks didn't honour the treaty either." She sighs. "The irony being, you only disappeared without a trace about eighty days ago."

With those words, the Doctor knows just where they are in the War, and so does the Master, if the way he stiffens and stills is anything to go by. "Then," the Doctor says, a bit faint in his own ears, "the Dalek Emperor has -- no." The Dalek Emperor had taken the Cruciform, the Doctor remembers; the turning-point of the War, what had made the Master run so far. Until that point, the Time War had been a decades-long war of attrition, the Time Lords superior in technology but the Daleks superior in numbers, and far more vicious, so that by the time Gallifrey had realised the gravity of the situation, the Time Lords were already much worn down. Still, it might have kept on that way, while the foundations of reality grew increasingly unsteady, if it were not for the Cruciform. It was -- is, right now _is_ \-- a Time Lord warship, dramatically named in the same spirit that caused the Citadel to proudly stand on a continent called Wild Endeavour. The Daleks had been fobbing off with bits of Time Lord technology for ages, trying to gain the edge; dimensionally transcendental storage devices, particularly refined Vortex Manipulators. Their capture of the Cruciform was something else entirely: it was a ship designed to circumvent transduction barriers -- not just Gallifrey's, but any barriers the Time Lords had constructed in an effort to keep the Daleks at bay. If the Dalek Emperor has only come into possession of the Cruciform recently, the Daleks might not yet know the full extent of its powers. They won't, not until --

"Arcadia," the Doctor says, nearly tripping over the words, "have we gone into Arcadia?"

"Only just," Romana answers, frowning. "Why?"

"They're going to figure out how it works -- the Cruciform. Because the barriers are weak there -- fortifying them won't help -- they'll go into Arcadia and they'll figure out how it works and within the year they'll be back here, Romana, they'll --"

"Unless we don't fortify them," Donna says suddenly.

They all turn to stare at her.

"That's where and when they find out it gets through transduction barriers," she says reasonably. "So we don't have one there."

"Donna, that makes Arcadia a sitting target!" the Doctor protests.

"No," she says, and when she looks at him there are tears in her eyes. She knows what Arcadia was like. "We still defend it. Just without the barrier."

"Excuse me," Jenny puts in, "but this Cruciform thing -- if it's their best weapon, you don't want to be defending against it. You'll want to shoot it down quick as you can. You can't win a war on the defensive."

"No," the Doctor murmurs. He looks around at them all and explains, as calmly as possible, "Thing is, we've got a causality problem. In my timeline, with the Dalek Emperor leading the attack, Arcadia falls. The Emperor keeps on until -- until the end, and ... when the end comes his ship gets blasted out through time, before -- before the time lock sets in. And I know it because I was there when those Daleks were finally destroyed, and that's what caused me to regenerate into this body -- if I wasn't like this I might have chosen different things -- and if I hadn't been in New York later I wouldn't have caused another Dalek to shift back and break the time lock --" He grips his hair in frustration. "Considering the strain on the universe already, putting a massive paradox on it -- Romana."

She meets his eyes and smiles, an old, sad smile, one that knows him terribly well. He's surrounded by people who know him terribly well.

"I shouldn't have come," he says. "The only way to fix it properly is to go back out and seal the time lock for good."

Romana, fierce brave good Romana who had the courage to be President when he never could, who can't know what's going to happen and hopes for the best and expects the worst, nods, accepting this solution.

Donna, across the room, voice low, says, "Coward."

He turns to her. "Coward any day, Donna," he whispers, "remember?"

Her face snaps into that stubborn angry _human_ look. "Doctor," she says, her voice very steady, "the day I met you, you _drowned a whole species_. I know you gave them a choice. But you didn't tell the Empress who you were, because you -- wanted --" She takes a shaky breath. "I'm sorry, Jenny," she says. "This is your dad the soldier. Cos I know you, Doctor, and I know you want this done; I know you hate it here. But I didn't think you'd be so afraid of your own mess." She smiles a little, sadly. "Would it really be so terrible to save them all?"

"That's not --" the Doctor protests, his throat closed up. "Donna, you know if I could do something --"

"But you _can_," she says. "Right here, right now. Turning back time. Stopping death. That's what you _do_." Donna laughs suddenly, her eyes sparkling. "You promise it to everyone else but you've never believed it could work for your own life. _I'm_ the Doctor now, and it's your life, and we will. Got it?"

The Doctor thinks of turning back Donna's life to save it; he thinks of the reversal. He thinks of Jenny dying in his arms, and of the Master, and all these broken things, and he sees Donna looking at him, Romana standing there _alive_, Jenny watching him with absolute trust even after the things Donna has said.

"Got it," he says, and tries a smile. It seems to fit, more or less. "We'll ..."

Hang on.

He looks around, frowning. "Where did the Master go?"

The Master is in fact nowhere to be seen, and the door through which they came is slightly ajar. The Doctor swears. "Did anyone notice when he left?" he asks, although he knows it's pointless; _he_ should have noticed, and didn't. "What does he think he's doing?" the Doctor demands, although not to anyone in particular.

"Doctor," Donna says. She's gone pale.

His attention snaps to her. "What?"

"When we flew in," Donna says, in tones that plead someone to prove her wrong, "all four of us were flying the TARDIS."

"Isn't that the way you're supposed to do it?" Jenny asks, just as Romana demands, "You allowed the Master navigational control?"

"I didn't," the Doctor protests. Swallows. "I never told the TARDIS to ... allow him in ..."

"Oh, you bleeding idiot," Donna says.

That's the long and short of it. The Doctor didn't notice the Master rearranging anything inside his head, and he _would_ have noticed, he'd noticed _everything_ \-- but then the Master probably hadn't needed to make any changes to either of their minds. Giving the Master access to his mind had been exactly the same as giving him access to the TARDIS controls, and she wouldn't understand the subtleties given that sort of override. "I'd better --" the Doctor says, backing out of the room, and sprints off down the corridor.

The TARDIS is long-gone by the time he gets to the place they parked it, of course.

The Doctor leans back against the wall and slides down to sit tangled on the floor. Behind his head brilliant sunlight pours in through the transduction barrier and the orange sky and the dome over the city, and all around him is so much empty space; he is sitting on a dead planet from which his living ship and the only other Time Lord have escaped.

Romana finds him there, and sits down next to him in a rustle of skirts. No worry for her dignity. She used to have so much dignity before he taught her better, so many lives ago. They sit together in silence.

"Donna and Jenny want to go to Arcadia right away," Romana says at length. "They're down in the TARDIS bay. Apparently Donna's hoping to find a serviceable Type 80."

"It won't be the same," the Doctor says, meaning another TARDIS, meaning something returned to, long after it's gone.

"She said everyone loses." Romana tucks her legs neatly under her skirt. "I see what she means."

She reaches for the Doctor's arm, but he flinches away. "Don't," he whispers. After a moment bursts out, "What possessed you to bring him back? What possessed the _Council_?" He rakes a hand through his hair, subsides. She's giving him one of her calm sensible looks, with just the hint of a smile at the corner of her mouth, sympathetic but unpitying. She reminds him suddenly but perhaps not irrationally of Donna. "We were --" he tries. Swallows. "It was nice, wasn't it, being young?"

"Yes," she says, and settles a quiet hand on his shoulder. "Whatever you've done and will do, Doctor, I know it's necessary."

"I know." The Doctor can't quite swallow the awful little laugh. "You tell me so, when the time comes."

She nods. "I'll remember that." Switching to brisk, she gets to her feet. "We can try to track the Master and get your TARDIS back."

The unspoken _or_ hangs in the air between them.

He wants to run. He wants to be in his own TARDIS, and he wants to yell at the Master about how childish he's being for running away _without_ him, and he wants to make sure the Master isn't destroying civilisations, instead of trying to save this one, and he wants to be a coward, and just a traveler, and leave this nightmare forever. And below him in the TARDIS bay a very young girl, who looks like he did once and has two hearts as he does, is unknowingly preparing to go to Arcadia. And with her is a woman who has all the Doctor's terrible memories and is going to Arcadia despite them.

"I'll -- go down and meet them," he says, only a little hoarsely.

Romana smiles that painfully pretty smile of hers, and he flees.

 

## (Arcadia, Sigma Librae, 2657)

Donna has chosen a perfectly serviceable Type 83 and hasn't bothered to change it from default settings. It brushes impersonally against the Doctor's mind, and from the expression on Donna's face, it isn't bonding with her any more than it is with him. Even in the middle of his trepidation the Doctor feels awful for her. At least his TARDIS is still out there, although there's admittedly no guarantee the Master won't cannibalise her again.

Jenny, out of the dress from Martha's wedding and in practical clothing that looks uncomfortably like that she was born in, is scrolling through the databank on the console. She looks up with a frown. "But there are battle TARDISes, it says! Why don't we take one of those?"

"This is safer." Donna gives Jenny a long look. "Blasters under the console, Jenny. The Daleks have figured out how to incapacitate the later type TARDISes. This ship itself doesn't have any firepower but it's a lot less likely to be targeted before we can get in for a landing."

Jenny emerges from under the console hefting the blaster gun comfortably, and stands attention-straight. "What are we expecting?"

Donna glances at the Doctor, whose jaw is clenched. She sighs. "Trenches," she says. "Spaceships. Daleks and scared colonists who've never had to use guns."

"Right," Jenny says, squaring her shoulders determinedly. "And we're there to make sure the transduction barrier goes down."

Donna nods. "Romana's contacted the commanders, but we're in to make sure it goes right." She turns to the Doctor. "A word?"

He nods mechanically and lets her gently take his arm. "Listen," she says, low enough only he can hear, "everything you've been doing since the end of the War, you've been recreating it. Not -- not all the time, but enough. Honestly it's a bit of a pattern, you've been doing the same thing with the Master ever since --" She sees the look on his face and wisely stops. After a moment: "Point is, this is your chance to get it _right_. You can feel it, can't you? That fixed point we're getting to."

"What if getting it right is not getting away this time?" he demands, pulling away from her.

She gets that cold look again. Then, somewhat to the Doctor's astonishment, she reaches into a pocket and pulls out a rather wilted daisy. She threads it neatly through the buttonhole on the Doctor's suit jacket, looks him in the eye, and says, "You know better than that."

They land.

The borrowed TARDIS has touched down at the secondary line of defenses. This far back it's still quite beautiful, a planet of shimmering silver-green grass and soft sandy hills; a quarter mile on it's sand-churned-mud, energy fences and people with guns, all protecting the diamonds and machinery keeping the transduction barrier running. On the other side of the fortifications is the army of Kraxil, very highly bribed by the Daleks to attempt to break through the defenses and destroy the barrier generators on this and a dozen other worlds. The Doctor starts shaking, a small insidious uncontrollable tremor that's easy enough to hide.

"Donna," he says, "you and Jenny -- and _Jenny_, promise me this -- you find the Commander and make sure he understands Romana's message. I'm -- I'll --" He gestures vaguely, and when Donna gives him an understanding nod he sets off at once for the trenches.

Perhaps it's some form of insanity. Maybe Donna's right and he is going to replay it until he gets it right. At the moment he's drawn on by simple morbid curiosity: does it really look the way he remembers it? And oh he remembers it, Kraxil and human colonist bodies alike, folded ragdolls in the yellow mud; the feel of actually having a gun, and counting, in his head, desperately trying to keep score as he's never bothered to before because this time it's his fault, this time he can't ask them to make a choice first, this time the figures ratchet up in the dozens each hour, the hundreds each day. He remembers the moment the transduction barrier was ripped from the sky and the Daleks came screaming through, the horrified disbelief of it; one colonist in particular sticks in his mind, a wild-eyed waif of a man who looked equally horrified of everything, the Kraxil and the Daleks and the Doctor alike, who had seized long grasping fingers at the Doctor's coat and babbled something to him as the barrier went down, how it would all end in flames. The rest of the memories do not bear thought, branded though they are in his mind. And if he's lucky -- if he's very, very lucky, they'll be gone by the time it happens again, because taking the transduction barrier down might save Gallifrey but it won't save Arcadia.

He's nearly to the encampment when Jenny catches up with him, panting with exertion. "Dad," she gasps, "Dad, the Commander has Romana's message but he thinks it must be a Dalek hoax and I don't know how long Donna can yell at him before she gets arrested." When the Doctor opens his mouth to make a suggestion, she adds in a rush, "And mostly he thinks that because there's a Dalek fleet spotted on its way over, Dad, and they have the Cruciform."

The Doctor's hearts make a valiant leap for his throat. "Jenny," he says very carefully, making sure he's perfectly understood, "I'm going to take down the barrier myself before the Daleks arrive. Go back, get Donna, and get the TARDIS. If I'm not back by the time the Daleks get here, _leave_."

"No," Jenny says, "no, we can't. We're not going to leave you."

"All right," the Doctor says, speaking faster now, knowing better than to argue, "don't come after me, then, just wait at the TARDIS until I get back. Now _go_!"

Jenny nods, terribly earnest, and turns to sprint back in the direction of the secondary defenses. At that the Doctor sets off in the opposite direction at a flat run, adrenaline kicked up high. He doesn't know how soon the Daleks will be here. Up ahead he can hear weapon-fire, the Kraxil having been notified of the Daleks' imminent arrival and stepping up the attack. Even if he can manage to avoid getting shot by the Kraxil, he's likely to be murdered by the colonists. And he's here, firmly in events, and he doesn't have _time_ \--

Reaching the front line he's assailed at once with the old horrible familiarity of it, everything in the peculiar stop-motion that the world becomes when it's deadly serious, not an adventure at all. Faces he recognises, some of them mobile where he only knows them from stillness, and there comes that fracture in the light that hails approaching warships out beyond the atmosphere. If only the barrier machine was further into the line of defenses -- but the Kraxil nearly seized it before the colonists and their Time Lord officers managed to beat them back -- if only the machine was _movable_ \-- but it's not and it's still so far away --

And then the Doctor stumbles into himself.

Right there, dust in his curls and clinging to his jacket, blue eyes so tired and afraid, looking at him and looking through him, impersonal. The Doctor stares at himself with choked breath, two heartbeats, four, and the sky tears open.

Too late.

The Dalek Emperor knows what the Cruciform does now, and the warships are screaming down through the sky and the Kraxil are cheering and pouring up and over their own energy fences. He's too late. It's much worse than Fjemir, a thousand times worse and real. He watches the pain and horror and comprehension on his other face, and with a whirling outside sense of déjà vu he understands, even as he catches in terror at his younger self's coat. The blue eyes focus on him then, and he can't not say it because he always has, because he _remembers_, and he babbles in despair, "I'm sorry, I didn't -- there wasn't time and it's still going to end now, it's all going to burn -- ashes and I can't _stop_ it --"

He's wrenched away from himself by a real colonist, a hard young woman who shoves a blaster into his arms. He stares at it numbly. Thinks: _I should get back to Donna and Jenny._

But now the memories won't stop, floodgates opened and context pulling things out of vague horror. How he was one of the eight survivors -- the Commander not one of them -- but all of them Time Lords, he'd thought, because they'd all known to head for his TARDIS when it was hopeless, and it was the ginger one who'd kept her head, out of all of them, the one who despite being pale and shaking had told him to fly back to Gallifrey, helped him to fly. He would never have recognised her, changed and tired and hard and _him_. And the girl who'd been at his side in the trenches, nearly the whole time, blonde and beautiful and a completely unwavering soldier. He remembers the other five equally, with shudders of pain, and had never _thought_, but there they were, are, will be, Donna and Jenny, saving him before their creation, preventing paradox with all their complicated threads. But he -- the Doctor, himself, this body, that terrified colonist -- had not made it. Will not.

All around him rage the flames and the screaming, and the Doctor stares at his blaster, absorbing this knowledge. He feels nothing so much as a great relief, and this time Donna isn't here to save him. He sets the blaster down gently, and turns his back to the fighting, a moving target walking away.

The blast when it hits him is not unexpected. It hurts no more or less than it should: a shattering flare to his shoulder blade just above his left heart. The Doctor walks another step, two, before falling to his knees.

What happens next _is_ unexpected. His TARDIS starts materialising around him.

With exhaustion, and shame, and mostly an overwhelming sense of relief, the Doctor blacks out.


	13. 5x13: Time Lock

## (The Vortex)

He wakes slowly, groggy and aching. His shoulder aches and his head throbs, but the TARDIS hums around him, _his_ TARDIS, and his fingers twitch. He makes a soft inarticulate noise. At once hands are helping him sit up and a hot cup of tea is pressed into his palms. He drinks it in scalding gulps and manages to crack his eyelids open.

The Doctor is in a small bedroom, the TARDIS' walls curving around him, and the Master is sitting on the coverlet, looking quite pale and very angry.

Memories begin trickling in mercilessly. "Hi," the Doctor croaks.

"You _fucking idiot_," the Master hisses. "What the hell did you think you were doing?" He doesn't actually give the Doctor a chance to answer, but goes on in a furious rush, "You're lucky she wouldn't listen to me. Your TARDIS. She was going _mad_ trying to track you down, did you know that?"

"Can't live without each other," the Doctor says somewhat apologetically. Swallows.

The Master laughs, a mad little giggle, and the Doctor thinks: _You thought I'd abandoned _you_; of all the arrogant --_

"There is something nice about it, though," the Master says, having controlled his giggles, addressing this observation to the coverlet. "Getting shot. Not wanting to be rescued." Darts a glance at the Doctor. "Yes?"

"I don't know," the Doctor confesses, tipping his head back against the headboard. He swallows and looks back at the Master. "Thank you."

The Master sneers. "It was your TARDIS, not me."

"You're clever," the Doctor says quietly. "You're _very_ clever. You've made her do things against her nature before." He struggles a bit more upright, which doesn't hurt; he's still stiff, but otherwise fine. Reaches out and curls a hand around the Master's.

For a long moment the Master's silent; twists his wrist in the Doctor's grip until their hands are clasped together, and both of them shiver a little. The Master leans forward and kisses him softly, pulls away before the Doctor can properly reciprocate. A faint smile darts across the Master's face. "You're going to tell me a story," he says.

The Doctor blinks. "What?"

The Master settles back, looking pleased with himself. "You're going to tell me how you made Gallifrey burn."

The Doctor starts to recoil in horror, but the Master has already squeezed their clasped hands, sent through a psychic pulse of calm. The Doctor blinks, in surprise more than anything else; he hadn't been aware the Master _had_ any calm to send. He takes a shaky breath.

"Destroyed the Eye of Harmony," he says. "Took a time-freeze grenade and threw it in."

"A time-freeze grenade in the nucleus of a black hole." The Master's eyebrows go up. "Surprisingly simple." He grins. "The _state_ you must have been in!" The Doctor tries to tug his hand away and the Master subsides, becomes serious. "That would have given you plenty of time to run away, too." He props his chin in his free hand and stares thoughtfully at the Doctor. "It's all very elaborate."

"What is?" the Doctor asks dully.

"This whole business with Donna Noble." The Master frowns. "I took a good look at Arcadia after I picked you up. Very impressive timelines, I've got to admit. But do you really think the entire point of the thing was for you to go forward in order to fetch people to save you in the past? It _has_ to be more than that."

"No," the Doctor says. Slumps down. "I found the fixed point. All that's left to do now is seal up the time lock."

The Master snorts. "You're really just going to ..." He trails off, an arrested look on his face. "Seal the ..." He springs to his feet. "Up. Get up. Now."

There doesn't seem to be much alternative, so the Doctor does. Barefoot, in rumpled trousers and t-shirt, he follows the Master along a corridor, through the greenhouse, past an orphaned umbrella stand, down a staircase, and the back way into the game vault. The remnants of their last chess game, string and overturned game boards, litter the floor. The Master bounds across the room to erase their complicated score from the whiteboard, then whirls on the Doctor.

"For my king, Skaro," he says without preamble. "For my queen, the Dalek Emperor. You'll have Gallifrey and yourself."

The Doctor stares at him. "You want to play a game."

"Actually," the Master says, writing up the new columns on which to keep score, "I want to do a staged recreation to see if there's anything we've missed. Actually I'm _sure_ there's something you missed, you're really not as clever as all that, but --"

"All _right_," the Doctor snaps. "But I can't very well move a pawn first. It starts when I check Skaro."

The Master smirks. "You have _plenty_ of pawns, Doctor," he says, and shrugs. "But it's not a proper game without conditions, is it? If you lose I get ... oh, I get to start growing my own TARDIS."

"If I win?" the Doctor asks.

The Master beams. "Oh, if you _win_ you get your planet back."

***

Quite a few hours later, with a few breaks for tea and biscuits and discussions of strategy, the Doctor is looking markedly better. The light is back in his eyes, the colour back in his cheeks; even his hair has perked up a bit. The Master feels quite pleased with this. Traveling with the Doctor, were he unresponsive, would be frankly dull and probably a bit embarrassing. But the Doctor is responding quite well, racing about the room, his mind easily keeping up with the Master's, hooking bits of string back and forth, waving the tennis racket that represents the Medusa Cascade, generally being exactly the Doctor the Master wants him to be.

Rose is the first pawn to cross the board and be queened; she demolishes the Dalek Emperor at once. The Doctor is positively gleeful as he loops the string of her timeline around the room -- Bad Wolf here and there; scribbles it on a sticky note and sticks it to the Master's forehead, laughing. The Master indulges this, and snips the Dalek Emperor's timeline, effectively cutting it off at the blast that ended the Time War.

There's a rather awkward bit when the Master runs his own timeline from the war to the end of the universe and back to the twenty-first century. (Actually his entire string is a spectacular mess, with full stops here and there, cut off at the turn of the millennium and being pulled up out of the Matrix back in Gallifrey some relative time later. He's somewhat mollified by the spectacular tangles that the Doctor's bit of string has long since become.) Martha despite being a pawn corners the Master so the Doctor can take him out, which doesn't seem entirely fair, so the Master hurriedly snips his thread -- he rather fondly thinks he'll call the scissors Lucy -- and reconnects it with Donna's. Donna has meanwhile also crossed the board and been queened. They send her off to meet Jenny after joining up their own threads.

"Found any patterns yet?" the Master asks, jotting down the latest score.

"It's a bit of a mess," the Doctor says dubiously, holding the ends of his and the Master's twisted-together threads. He seems to recognise the irony in this and smiles lopsidedly. "Right, where's Romana's thread gone?"

At the end the scoreboard reads an astonishingly even match, which means they were quite accurate; Donna's and Jenny's threads end back on Gallifrey with a hint of uncertainty, tugging faintly at the Doctor's thread from two regenerations ago. The Doctor's and the Master's threads, which the Doctor has twisted rather worryingly tight together, are still in the Doctor's hand out in the vagueness of space while the Master stalks around the room, looking for points of tension, pullings they might not yet have seen.

He comes back to the Doctor and tugs gently on their twined threads. Jenny's, Donna's, and Romana's threads all bounce a little in their direction. The Dalek threads, snipped off by the Doctor's eighth self, by Rose, by Donna and the little bit of string that is the other Doctor, stay sitting where they are.

The Doctor's eyes widen. He tugs too, harder. The Dalek threads lie still and everything connected to Gallifrey strains harder. "Did you --?" he says, and the Master nods. He wraps his hands around the thread over the Doctor's. They look at each other, and the Doctor grins, and they both tug as hard as they can.

A moment of delicate trembling, and the whole Gallifrey timeline delicately unravels itself from the surrounding threads, leaving Arcadia, leaving Skaro. The Master's thread has been snapped so many times that it makes no difference; the Doctor's thread is tied so tightly into a hundred different timelines that it holds, and by virtue of this keeps all the Gallifreyan strings steady too.

"It's entirely theoretical," the Doctor ventures.

"Believe me," the Master says, eyeing their solution, "I'm less than fond at any proof you really are the centre of the universe." He can't help a trace of smugness, though. He's the only one in the universe smart enough to always keep tabs on the Doctor; it turns out both he and the universe are listening.

"That's glorifying things a bit, don't you think?" the Doctor asks awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck. "I mean, it's not _me_, it's just the sum of my --" He stops, apparently remembering that a Time Lord is, at the most basic level, a being defined by the sum of his actions. Swallows. "I still destroyed the Eye of Harmony."

"Mm. If you say so."

The Doctor gapes at him. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"I've been quite curious for some time," the Master says, picking his way carefully out of the threads and going to the whiteboard, "how this old clunker managed to run at all if its _source_ is gone."

"She's very independent," the Doctor says, as though this really is a reasonable explanation.

The Master laughs. "Seriously? All right." He turns to the whiteboard, uncaps the pen again, and begins scribbling, going on as he does so. "Assume that a time-freeze grenade, interacting with the nucleus of a black hole, causes a catastrophic reaction resulting in a nuclear explosion and therefore in the annihilation of the planet and the surrounding Dalek fleets."

"Right." The Doctor comes over. "What are you getting at?"

"Assume instead a time lock of a particular duration," the Master says. "The time-freeze grenade does not cause a nuclear reaction. Instead, it induces stasis."

The Doctor is staring at him with shining eyes. "Safe mode," he says. "Everyone who has interacted with a TARDIS -- with the Eye -- is protected inside the freeze until the time lock is broken."

"The friction of dragging a whole world through a small rift would cause a pretty catastrophic burn to anything caught outside the freeze, too," the Master adds. "There go all your Daleks -- and the Emperor, he was caught in the backwash and ended up in 200,000."

"And my timeline," the Doctor says, running back to the threads and carefully walking his hands up his own. "Gallifrey doesn't _exist_ for nearly a decade of my personal time -- it's out of time long enough for the whole universe to adjust to it -- it would be impossible for me to sense it, or you, since you were caught up in my timestream --"

"But it _will_," the Master completes, beaming. "_There's_ your fixed point, Doctor: we pull Gallifrey back out of the time lock."

The Doctor beams back at him; then it slowly fades.

"It's been ... different," he says. "No one looking over your shoulder. Time feels sharper. And I was the only one ..."

He's asking the Master to talk him out of it. He's actually _asking_ the _Master_. And the Master knows he's won, finally, unequivocally, because the Doctor crying as he died was only the first point. If _he_ brings Gallifrey back, then every moment of the Doctor's guilt and horror and loneliness, every single painful thing the Time War left him with, will belong to the Master. And all the Doctor's joy and relief will belong to him too. He'll be the Master's, finally, properly.

All of Gallifrey knowing that the Doctor and the Master together saved them will be pretty priceless, too.

"Selfish," the Master says precisely. "Tell me how you're going to live with yourself if you don't save your planet for the sake of your own martyr complex. That will involve some _serious_ doublethink."

The Doctor winces. "I didn't mean --" he starts, and rakes a hand through his hair, and says, "Let's go test this hypothesis, then."

They go up to the console room, where the TARDIS is thrumming with excitement and welcomes the Master easily into her telepathic circuits. There is no elegant way to pull a planet through a time lock; in fact there might be no physical way. But the TARDIS is rather smugly confident of her ability to tow planets, and if anyone is mad enough to pull it off, it's the Doctor. So they run around the console together, setting the coordinates and powering up to maximum.

What they're about to do is not the psychic and scientific equivalent of stopping up a cracked leak in a dam by mixing together cement from sand and chewing gum and then slapping it over with a bit of duct tape. It's more or less the reverse. It's finding the one little crack in the dam and pulling the entire lake through in one go using a piece of string to harness the water and pulling it all with a toothpick.

Which means it's going to work.

The TARDIS finds the hole in the time lock easily enough. They'll have to time it perfectly; bring the magnetism and gravity up to maximum, throw it out through space and that one little point of the timelines bleeding into each other, throw out a lot of psychic energy after it, clinging to each other and to the TARDIS: there, the Eye of Harmony, frozen for a moment. They look at each other. "Ready?" the Master breathes, and the Doctor grins, a wildly happy grin. "No," he says. Together they _pull_.

Spacetime turns inside out; he's the TARDIS and all of himself and all of the Doctor. Probably all of them scream. Behind them a million million Daleks shriek and die in flames, and protesting all the way, hurtling through impossibility, Gallifrey follows her children out of the wreckage. The time lock snaps closed behind it.

Then everything is still.

Still tangled together they dash to the viewscreen. There, sitting like a glowing jewel, is Gallifrey, red and orange with clouds and continents, glittering, real. They laugh and jump and shout and kiss each other and for the first time in far too long the Master, for one small strange moment, doesn't hate Gallifrey.

They part, but only for a moment before the Doctor laughs and kisses him again. The waves of gratefulness and _focus_ are nearly more than the Master can bear. He ends up clutching helplessly at the Doctor's shirt and basking in it.

"Let's," the Doctor says at length, drawing back, "let's go down and see if Donna and Jenny are all right."

Frankly the Master doesn't care, but he's taking too much pleasure from the Doctor's giddiness to actually be annoying about it. He stays at the viewscreen and watches the curve of the horizon grow as the Doctor flies them down.

Somewhat to his surprise the Doctor lands them in the foothills of the mountains with the Citadel shining in the distance. Wide swaths of the plain are burned to ashes, and some of the Citadel's towers are smoking, but nearly everything is still standing. The Doctor bounds out of the TARDIS and up a hill, actually leaving the Master alone with his ship. But the Master isn't going anywhere.

He sits down in the doorway and thinks about this. He tries imagining going around rescuing pathetic ungrateful people for the Doctor's entertainment, and it's just as inconceivable now as it was the last time they had this conversation, lifetimes ago. He tries imagining the Doctor being convinced to rule something, and knows the impossibility of it. Then he imagines stealing a TARDIS from the Citadel, imagines running away and setting up a scheme and waiting for the Doctor to come attempt to stop him; the idea has a certain tried-and-true appeal, with the disadvantage of being apart from the Doctor until such time as the Doctor cottons onto the latest plot. He hates this.

The Doctor comes back down the slope, holding a daisy and grinning fit to break his face. He stops in front of the Master. The Master looks up at him. "Yes?"

The Doctor twirls the stem of the daisy in between thumb and forefinger, then carefully threads it into his jacket. The Master had thrown the last torn and muddy one out. Apparently daisies are the new celery, and he can barely keep himself from rolling his eyes. Instead he gets to his feet.

"We should get inside," the Doctor says, jerking his head in the direction of the Citadel.

"Ask me," the Master says, unpremeditated.

The Doctor stares at him. The red grass rustles and murmurs to itself, and a whirl of ash picks itself up in the wind down on the plain. Comprehension seeps into the Doctor's face.

"Discover the universe with me," he says, a bit haltingly. "See it at -- at my side. Come with me."

The Master makes a show of considering this. "No rulership in the cards? Not even something nice and benevolent? No?"

"_Master_," the Doctor says, with such deliberate fondness.

"Right," the Master says casually, fooling neither of them. "For a while, then. I will."

 

## (Gallifrey, Kasterborous, 5855.0 RE)

The Doctor can't remember ever feeling quite like this. Out the windows they pass he can see the brilliant orange sky, the distant shining mountains, there, a living planet. He drifts through the Citadel half in a dream; their TARDIS was surrounded by guards at once, but to all appearances it's an honour guard, which the Master seems to be appreciating, at least.

They're taken to the Council chambers, half-destroyed as they are. Romana is there, with the remnants of the Council -- and Donna, and Jenny. Jenny gives a shriek and runs right through their guard to leap nearly into the Doctor's arms and hug him tightly. It jolts him out of his half-dream and into wild awake joy. He laughs and hugs her back, very tightly, while their escorts look embarrassed, the Master looks amused, and the Council looks politely impatient. They'll have to keep looking that for some time, though, because the moment Jenny's done, Donna takes her place in hugging the Doctor.

"I was _hoping_ you'd figure it out," she tells him, beaming; a year older, oh, his Donna. He grins back at her with love and pride, and she adds, in a whisper, "When you go I'm getting a lift back to Martha's wedding day, got that? Jenny and I borrowed some stuff from Romana and we're going to fix my TARDIS up."

He nods to let her know he's heard, and backs up a step. Time to face the music.

And it begins: the Council formally questions them, he and the Master and Donna and Jenny. They're forced to explain the timelines in great detail, and with every passing moment the Council looks graver to hear of their egregious conduct with the fabric of spacetime. The Doctor knows they have no room to criticise or punish, though; aside from the indisputable fact that between the four of them they've saved Gallifrey and probably most of spacetime, the Council's own actions in the final stages of the War were far from exemplary too.

At the end of the questioning, Romana stands. "In accordance with what we have heard," she pronounces, "we are left with no choice but to reward you. Your rather unique skills would be invaluable in assisting us in the rebuilding of Gallifrey, and of the society of the Time Lords. We request that you stay."

As she says this she locks eyes with the Doctor, and he sees that she genuinely means it, but he sees too the amused understanding in her face. She knows him.

"Yeah, well," he says, stuffing his hands in his pockets and shrugging casually, "we'll have to think about it, you know, I need to think of what's best for Jenny and it's not like Donna's a Time Lord properly, and -- if you'll just excuse us, do you mind if we go into the corridor for a moment and discuss it? Brilliant, thanks."

He edges out, Donna biting back a grin, the Master not even _bothering_ to hide his, and Jenny looking puzzled as they follow him.

In the corridor Jenny says, "But Dad, don't you have to --?"

"Nah," Donna says. "This is what he _does_, see?" She wraps an arm around Jenny's shoulders. "Anyway Auntie Donna has things to show you. Singing towers and frozen waves of ice, Jenny, supernovas ten million miles wide, all sorts of beautiful things." She grins at the Doctor. "And some of us still have to newlyweds to properly congratulate and, oh, I dunno, maybe some people in Ealing to have tea with. Right, Doctor?"

"Right," the Doctor agrees, although he's probably going to hold off a while before he takes the Master to tea with anyone. Might hold off for centuries, even.

"So what _are_ we doing, then?" Jenny asks.

"Jenny, my dear," the Master says, with an air of long-suffering, "we're running away."

They run.


End file.
